Творчество

Патрик Генри Пирс (рассказы)

The Dearg-Daol

A walking-man, it was, come into my father's house out of the Joyce Country, that told us this story by the fireside one wild winter's night. The wind was wailing round the house, like women keening the dead, while he spoke, and he would make his voice rise or fall according as the wind's voice would rise or fall. A tall man he was, with wild eyes, and his share of clothes almost in tatters. There was a sort of fear on me of him when he came in, and his story didn't lessen my fear.

The three most blessed beasts in the world, says the walking-man, are the haddock, the robin redbreast, and God's cow. And the three most cursed beasts in the world are the viper, the wren, and the dearg-daol (`black chafer'). And it's the dearg-daol is the most cursed of them. 'Tis I that know that. Woman of the house, if a man would murder his son, don't call him the dearg-daol. If a woman would come between yourself and the husband of your bed, don't put her in comparison with the dearg-daol.

`God save us,' says my mother.

`Amen, Lord,' says the walking-man.

He didn't speak again for a spell. We all listened, for we knew he was going to tell a story. It wasn't long before he began.

When I was a lad, says the walking- man, there was a woman of our people that everybody was afraid of. In a little, lonely cabin in a gap of a mountain, it was, she lived. No one would go near her house. She, herself, wouldn't come next or near any other body's house. Nobody would speak to her when they met her on the road. She wouldn't put word nor wisdom on anybody at all. You'd think a pity to see the creature and she going the road alone.

`Who is she,' I would say to my mother, `or why wouldn't they speak to her?'

`Whisht, boy,' my mother would say to me.`That's the Dearg-daol. 'Tis a cursed woman she is.'

`What did she do, or who put the curse on her?' I would say.

`A priest of God that put the curse on her,' my mother would say. `No one in life knew what she did.'

And that's all the knowledge I got of her until I was a grown chap. And indeed to you, neighbours, I never heard anything about her but that she committed some dreadful sin at the start of her life, and that the priest put his curse on her before the people on account of that sin. One Sunday, when the people were gathered at Mass, the priest turned round on them, and says he---

`There is a woman here,' says he, `that will merit eternal damnation for herself and for every person that makes familiar with her. And I say to that woman,' says he, `that she is a cursed woman, and I say to you, let you not have intercourse or neighbourliness with that woman but as much as you'd have with a dearg-daol. Rise up now, Dearg-daol,' says he, `and avoid the company of decent people henceforth.

The poor woman got up, and went out the chapel door. There was no name on her from that out but the Dearg-daol. Her own name and surname were put out of mind. 'Twas said that she had the evil eye. If she'd look on a calf or a sheep that wasn't her own, the animal would die. The women were afraid to let their children out on the street if the Dearg-daol was going the road.

I married a comely girl when I was of the age of one-and-twenty. We had a little slip of a girl, and we had hopes of another child. One day when I was cutting turf in the bog, my wife was feeding the fowl on the street, when she saw---God between us and harm---the Dearg-daol making on her up the bohereen, and she with the little, soft pataire of a child in her arms. An arm of the child was about the woman's neck, and her shawl covering her. Speech left my wife.

The Dearg-daol laid the little girl in her mother's breast. My woman took notice that her clothes were wet.

`What happened the child?' says she.

`Falling into Lochán na Luachra (the Pool of the Rushes), she did it,' says the Dearg-daol. `Looking for water-lilies she was. I was crossing the road, and I heard her scream. In over the dyke with me. It was only by dint of trouble I caught her.'

`May God reward you,' says my wife.

The other woman went off before she had time to say more. My wife fetched the little wee thing inside, she dried her, and put her to sleep. When I came in from the bog she told me the story. The two of us prayed our blessing on the Dearg-daol that night.

The day after, the little girl began prattling about the woman that saved her. `The water was in my mouth, and in my eyes, and in my ears,' says she. `I saw shining sparks, and I heard a great noise; I was slipping and slipping,' says she; `and then,' says she, `I felt a hand about me, and she lifted me up and she kissed me. I thought it was at home, I was, when I was in her arms and her shawl about me,' says she.

A couple of days after that my wife noticed the little thing away from her. We sought her for the length of two hours. When she came home she told us that she was after paying a visit to the woman that saved her. `She made a cake for me,' says she. `She has ne'er a one in the house at all but herself, and she said to me I should go visiting her every evening.'

Neither I nor my wife was able to say a word against her. The Dearg-daol was after saving our girl's life, and it wouldn't be natural to hinder the child going into her house. From that day out the little girl would go up the hill to her every day.

The neighbours said to us that it wasn't right. There was a sort of suspicion on ourselves that it wasn't right, but how could we help it?

Would you believe me, people? From the day the Dearg-daol laid eyes on the little girl, she began dwindling and dwindling, like a fire that wouldn't be mended. She lost her appetite and her activity. After a quarter she was only a shadow. After another month she was in the churchyard.

The Dearg-daol came down the mountain the day she was buried. She wouldn't be let into the graveyard. She went her road up the mountain again alone. My heart bled for the creature, for I knew that our trouble was no heavier than her trouble. I myself went up the hill the morning of the next day. I meant to say to her that neither my wife nor myself had any upbraiding for her. I knocked at the door. I didn't get any answer. I went into the house. The ashes were red on the hearth. There was no one at all to be seen. I noticed a bed in the corner. I went over to the bed. The Dearg-daol was lying there, and she cold dead.

There wasn't any luck on me or on my household from that day out. My wife died a month after that, and she in childbirth. The child didn't live. There fell a murrain on my cattle the winter following. The landlord put me out of my holding. I am a walking man, and the roads of Connacht before me, from that day to this.

Barbara

Barbara wasn't too well-favoured, the best day she was. Anybody would admit that much. The first cause of it,---she was purblind. You'd say, to look at her, she was one-eyed. Brideen never gave in that she was, however. Once when another little girl said, out of sheer spite on them both, that Barbaraa had only `one blind little eye, like the tailor's cat,' Brideen said angrily that Barbara had her two eyes as good as anybody, but it's how she'd have one eye shut, for the one was enough for her (let it be blind), to do her share of work. However it was, it couldn't be hidden that she was bald; and I declare a bald head isn't a nice thing in a young woman. Another thing, she was a dummy; or it would be more correct for me to say, that she didn't ever speak with anybody, but with Brideen only. If Brideen told truth, she had a tasty tongue of Irish, and her share of thoughts were the loveliest in the world. It's not well she could walk, for she was one-legged and that one leg itself broken. She had two legs on a time, but the dog ate one of them, and the other was broken where she fell from the top of the dresser. But who's Barbara, say you, or who's Brideen? Brideen is the little girl, or, as she'd say herself, the little slip of a woman, that lives in the house next the master's,--- on the left-hand side, I think, going up the road. It's likely you know her now? If you don't, I can't help you. I never heard who her people were, and she herself said to me that her father has ne'er a name but `Daddy.' As for Barbara,---well, it's as good for me to tell you her adventures and travels from start to finish.

THE ADVENTURES OF BARBARA HERE.

One day when Brideen's mother got up, she gave their breakfasts to Brideen and to her father, to the dog, to the little cat, to the calves, to the hens, to the geese, to the ducks, and to the little robin redbreast that would come to the door at breakfast time every morning. When she had that much done, she ate her own breakfast. Then she began readying herself for the road. Brideen was sitting on her own little stool without a word out of her, but she putting the eyes through her mother. At long last she spoke:

`Is mama going from Brideen?'

`She's not, a stóir. Mama will come again in the evening. She's going to Galway.'

`Is Brideen going there, too?'

`She's not, a chuid. The road's too long, and my little girl would be tired. She'll stay at home making sport for herself, like a good little girl would. Won't she stay?'

`She will.'

`She won't run out on the street?'

`She won't.'

`Daddy'll come in at dinner-time, and ye'll have a meal together. Give mama a kiss, now.'

The kiss was given, and the mother was going. Brideen started up.

`Mama!'

`What is it a rúin?'

`Won't you bring home a fairing to Brideen?'

`I will, a chuid. A pretty fairing.'

The mother went off, and Brideen remained contented at home. She sat down on her little stool. The dog was curled before the fire, and he snoring. Brideen woke him up, and put a whisper in his ear:

`Mama will bring home a fairing to Brideen!'

`Wuff!' says the dog, and went asleep to himself again. Brideen knew that `Wuff!' was the same as `Good news!'

The little cat was sitting on the hearth. Brideen lifted it in her two arms, rubbed its face to her cheeks, and put a whisper in its ear:

`Mama will bring home a fairing to Brideen!'

`Mee-ow!' says the little cat. Brideen knew that `Mee-ow!' was the same as `Good news!'

She laid the little cat from her, and went about the house singing to herself. She made a little song as follows:

O little dog, and O little dog!
Sleep a while till my mama comes!
O little cat, and O little cat!

Be purring till she comes home!
O little dog and O little cat!
At the fair O! my mama is,
But she'll come again in the little evening O!
And she'll bring home a fairing with her!

She tried to teach this song to the dog, but it's greater the wish the dog had for sleep than for music. She tried to teach it to the little cat, but the little cat thought its own purring sweeter. When her father came in at midday, nothing would do her but to say this song to him, and make him to learn it by heart.

The mother returned home before evening. The first word Brideen said was:

`Did you bring the fairing with you, mama?'

`I did, a chuisle.'

`What did you bring with you?'

`Guess!' The mother was standing in the middle of the floor. She had her bag laid on the floor, and her hands behind her.

`Sweets?'

`No!'

`A sugar cake?'

`No, maise! I have a sugar cake in my bag, but that's not the fairing.'

`A pair of stockings?' Brideen never wore shoes or stockings, and she had been long coveting them.

`No, indeed! You're too young for stockings a little while yet.'

`A prayer book?' There's no need for me to say that Brideen wasn't able to read (for she hadn't put in a day at school in her life), but she thought she was. `A prayer book?' says she.

`Not at all!'

`What is it, then?'

`Look!'

The mother spread out her two hands, and what did she lay bare but a little doll! A little wooden doll that was bald, and it purblind; but its two cheeks were as red as a berry, and there was a smile on its mouth. Anybody who'd have an affection for dolls, he would give affection and love to it. Brideen's eyes lit up with joy.

`Ora, isn't it pretty! Ara, mama, heart, where did you get it? Ora ó! I'll have a child of my very own now,---a child of my very owneen own! Brideen will have a child!'

She snatched the little doll, and she squeezed it to her heart. She kissed its little bald head, and its two red cheeks. She kissed its little mouth, and its little snub nose. Then she remembered herself, raised her head, and says she to her mother:

`Kith!' (like that Brideen would say `Kiss.')

The mother stooped down till the little girl kissed her. Then she must kiss the little doll. The father came in at that moment, and he was made do the same.

There wasn't a thing making Brideen anxious that evening but what name she'd christen the doll. Her mother praised `Molly' for it, and her father thought the name `Peggy' would be apt. But none of these were grand enough, it seemed to Brideen.

`Why was I called Brideen, daddy?' says she after supper.

`The old women said that you were like your uncle Padraic, and since we couldn't christen you `Padraic,' you were christened

`Brigid,' as that, we thought, was the thing nearest it.'

`Do you think is she here' (the doll), `like my uncle Padraic, daddy?'

`O, not like a bit. Your uncle Padraic is fair-haired,---and, I believe, he has a beard on him now.'

`Who's she like, then?'

`Muise, 'twould be hard to say, girl!--- 'twould be hard, that.'

Brideen meditated for a while. Her father was stripping her clothes from her in front of the fire during this time, for it was time for her to be going to sleep. When she was stripped, she went on her knees, put her two little hands together, and she began like this:

`O Jesus Christ, bless us and save us! O Jesus Christ, bless daddy and mama and Brideen, and keep us safe and well from accident, and from the harm of the year, if it is the will of my Saviour. O God, bless my uncle Padraic that's now in America, and my Aunt Barbara---.' She stopped, suddenly, and put a shout of joy out of her.

`I have it! I have it, daddy!' says she.

`What have you, love? Wait till you finish your share of prayers.'

`My Aunt Barbara! She's like my Aunt Barbara!'

`Who's like your Aunt Barbara?'

`The little doll! That's the name I'll give her! Barbara!'

The father let a great shout of laughter before he remembered that the prayers weren't finished. Brideen didn't laugh, at all, but followed on like this:

`O God, bless my Uncle Padaric that's now in America, and my Aunt Barbara, and (this is an addition she put to it herself), and bless my own little Barbara, and keep her from mortal sin! Amen, O Lord!'

The father burst laughing again. Brideen looked at him, and wonder on her.

`Brush off, now, and in into your bed with you!' says he, as soon as he could speak for the laughing. `And don't forget Barbara!' says he.

`Little fear!' West with her into the room, and into the bed with her with a leap. Be sure she didn't forget Barbara.

From that night out Brideen wouldn't go to sleep, for gold nor for silver, without Barbara being in the bed with her. She wouldn't sit to take food without Barbara sitting beside her. She wouldn't go out making fun to herself without Barbara being along with her. One Sunday that her mother brought her with her to Mass Brideen wasn't satisfied till Barbara wa brought, too. A neighbourwoman wouldn't come in visiting, but Barbara would be introduced to her. One day that the priest struck in to them, Brideen asked him to give Barbara his blessing. He gave his blessing to Brideen herself. She thought it was to the doll he gave it, and she was full-satisfied.

Brideen settled a nice little parlour for Barbara on top of the dresser. She heard that her Aunt Barbara had a parlour (in Uachtar Ard she was living), and she though that it wasn't too much for Barbara to have a parlour as good as anybody. My poor Barbara fell from the top of the dresser one day, as I have told already, and one of her legs was broken. It's many a disaster over that happened her. Another day the dog grabbed her, and was tearing her joint from

joint till Brideen's mother came to help her. The one leg remained safe with the dog. She fell into the river another time, and she had like to be drowned. It's Brideen's father that came to her help this journey. Brideen herself was almost drowned, and she trying to save her from the riverbank.

If Barbara wasn't too well-favoured the first day she came, it stands to nature it's not better the appearance was on her after putting a year by her. But 'twas all the same to Brideen whether she was well-favoured or ill-favoured. She gave the love of her heart to her from the first minute she laid an eye on her, and it's increasing that love was from day to day. Isn't it the two of them used to have the fun when the mother would leave the house to their care, times she'd be visiting in a neighbour's house! They would have the floor swept and the plates washed before her, when she'd return. And isn't it on the mother would be the wonder, mor 'eadh!

`Is it Brideen cleaned the floor for her mama?' she'd say.

`Brideen and Barbara,' the little girl would say.

`Muise, I don't know what I'd do, if it weren't for the pair of you!' the mother would say. And isn't it on Brideen would be the delight and the pride!

And the long days of summer they would put from them on the hillside, among the fern and flowers!---Brideen gathering daisies and fairy-thimbles and buttercups, and Barbara reckoning them for her (so she'd say); Brideen forever talking and telling tales that a human being (not to say a little doll) never heard the likes of before or since, and Barbara listening to her; it must be she'd be listening attentively, for there wouldn't come a word out of her mouth.

It's my opinion that there wasn't a little girl in Connacht, or if I might say it, in the Continent of Europe, that was more contented and happy-like, than Brideen was those days; and, I declare, there wasn't a little doll under the hollow of the sun that was more contented and happy-like than Barbara.

That's how it stood till Niamh Goldy-Head came.

2

Niamh Goldy-Head was a native of Dublin. A lady that came to Gortmore learning Irish promised before leaving that she'd send some valuable to Brideen. And, sure, she did. One day, about a week after her departure, Bartly the Postman walked in into the middle of the kitchen and laid a big box on the floor.

`For you, young woman,' says he to Brideen.

`Ara, what's in it, Bartly?'

`How do I know? A fairy, maybe.'

`O bhó!Where did you get it?'

`From a little green maneen, with a long blue beard on him, a red cap on his nob, and he riding a hare.'

`Ora, daddy! And what did he say to you, Bartly?'

`Devil a thing did he say only, `Give this to Brideen, and my blessing,' and off with him while you'd be winking.'

I am doubtful if this story of Bartly's was all true, but Brideen believed every word of it. She called to her mother, where she was inside in the room tidying the place after the breakfast.

`Mama, mama, a big box for Brideen! A little green maneen, with a long blue beard on him, that gave it to Bartly the Postman!'

The mother came out and Bartly gathered off.

`Mameen, mameen, open the box quick! Bartly thinks it's maybe a fairy is in it! Hurry, mameen, or how do we know he won't be smothered inside in the box?'

The mother cut the string. She tore the paper from the box. She lifted the lid. What should be in it, lying nice and comfortably in the box, like a child would be in a cradle, but the grandest and the beautifullest doll that eye ever saw! There was yellow-golden hair on it, and it falling in ringleted tresses over its breast and over its shoulders. There was the blush of the rose on its cheek. It's the likeness I'd compare its little mouth to---two rowanberries; and 'twas like pearls its teeth were. Its eyes were closed. There was a bright suit of silk covering its body and a red mantle of satin over that outside. There was a glittering necklace of noble stones about its throat, and, as a top on all the wonders, there was a royal crown on its head.

`A Queen!' says Brideen in a whisper, for there was a kind of dread on her before this glorious fairy. `A Queen from Tir-na-nOg! Look, mama, she's asleep. Do you think will she waken?'

`Take her in your hand,' says the mother.

The little girl stretched out her two hands timidly, laid them reverently on the wonderful doll, and at last lifted it out of the box. No sooner did she take it than the doll opened its eyes, and said in a sweet, weeny voice:

`Mam---a!'

`God bless us!' says the mother, making the sign of the cross on herself, `she can talk!'

There was a queer edge in Brideen's eyes, and there was a queer light in her features. But I don't think she was half as scared as the mother was. Children do be expecting wonders always, and when a wonderful thing happens it doesn't put as much astonishment on them as it does on grown people.

`Why wouldn't she talk?' says Brideen. `Can't Barbara talk? But it's sweeter entirely this voice than Barbara's voice.'

My grief, you are, Barbara! Where were you all this time? Lying on the floor where you fell from Brideen's hand when Bartly came in. I don't know did you hear these words from your friend's mouth. If you did, it's surely they'd go like a stitch through your heart.

Brideen continued speaking. She spoke quickly, her two eyes dancing in her head:

`A Queen this is,' says she. `A fairy Queen! Look at the fine suit she's wearing! Look at the mantle of satin is on her! Look at the beautiful crown she has! She's like yon Queen that Stephen of the Stories was discoursing about the other night,---the Queen that came over sea from Tir-na-nOg riding on the white steed. What's the name that was on that Queen, mama?'

`Niamh of the Golden Head.'

`This is Niamh Goldy-Head!' says the little girl.`I'll show her to Stephen the first other time he comes! Isn't it he will be glad to see her, mama? He was angry the other night when my daddy said there are no fairies at all in it. I knew my daddy was only joking.'

I wouldn't like to say that Niamh Goldy-Head was a fairy, as Brideen thought, but I'm sure there was some magic to do with her; and I'm full-sure that Brideen herself was under a spell from the moment she came into the house. If she weren't, she wouldn't leave Barbara lying by herself on the floor through the evening, without saying a word to her, or even remembering her, till sleep-time; nor would she go to sleep without bringing Barbara into the bed with her, as was her habit. It's with trouble you'd believe it, but it's the young Queen that slept along with Brideen that night, instead of the faithful little companion that used sleep with her every night for a year. Barbara remained lying on the floor, till Brideen's mother found her, and lifted and put her on top of the dresser where her own little parlour was. Barbara spent that night on the top of the dresser. I didn't hear that Brideen or her mother or her father noticed any lamenting from the kitchen in the middle of the night, and, to say truth, I don't think that Barbara shed a tear. But it's certain she was sad enough, lying up yonder by herself, without her friend's arm about her, without the heat of her friend's body warming her, without man or mortal near her, without hearing a sound but the faint, truly-lonesome sounds that do be heard in a house in the dead time of the night.

3

It's sitting or lying on the top of the dresser that Barbara spent the greater part of the next quarter. 'Twas seldom Brideen used speak to her; and when she would speak, she'd only say, `Be a good girl, Barbara. You see I'm busy. I must give attention to Niamh Goldy-Head. She's a Queen, you know, and she must be attended well.' Brideen was getting older now (I believe she was five years past, or, maybe, five and a-half), and she was rising out of a share of the habits she learned at the start of her babyhood. It's not `Brideen' she'd call herself now, for she knew the meaning that was in the little word `I,' and in those little tails `am' and `am not' when they're put after `I.' She knew, too, that it's great the respect and the honour due to a Queen, over what is due to a poor, little creatureen like Barbara.

I'm afraid Barbara didn't understand this story at all. She was only a little wooden doll, and, sure, 'twould be hard for its likes to understand the heart of a girl. It was plain to her that she was cast to one side. It's Niamh Goldy-Head would sleep along with Brideen now; it's Niamh Goldy-Head would sit beside her at meal-time; its Niamh Goldy-head would go out on the hill, foot to foot with her, that would lie with her among the fern, and would go with her gathering daisies and fairy-thimbles. It's Niamh Goldy-Head she'd press to her breast. It's Niamh Goldy-Head she'd kiss. Some other body to be in the place you'd be, some other body to be walking with the person you'd walk with, some other body to be kissing the mouth you'd long to kiss,---that's the greatest pain is to be suffered in this world; and that's the pain was in Barbara's heart now, torturing her from morning till night, and tormenting her from night till morning.

I suppose it'll be said to me that it's not possible for these thoughts, or any other thoughts, to be in Barbara's heart, for wasn't she only a wooden toy, without feeling, without mind, without understanding, without strength? My answer to anybody who'd speak like this to me would be:---How do we know? How do you or I know that dolls, and wooden toys, and the tree, and the hill, and the river, and the waterfall, and the little blossoms of the field, and the little stones of the strand haven't their own feeling, and mind, and understanding, and guidance? ---aye, and the hundred other things we see about us? I don't say they have; but 'twould be daring for me or for anybody else to say that they haven't. The children think they have; and it's my opinion that the children are more discerning in things of this sort than you or I.

One day that Barbara was sitting up lonesomely by herself in her parlour, Brideen and Niamh Goldy-Head were in earnest conversation by the fireside; or, I ought to say, Brideen was in earnest conversation with herself, and Niamh listening to her; for nobody ever heard a word out of the Queen's mouth but only `Mam-a.' Brideen's mother was outside the door washing. The father was setting potatoes in the garden. There only remained in the house Brideen and the two dolls.

It's like the little girl was tired, for she'd spent the morning washing (she'd wash the Queen's sheet and blanket every week). It was short till sleep came on her. It was short, after that, till she dropped her head on her breast and she was in deep slumber. I don't rightly understand what happened after that, but, by all accounts, Brideen was falling down and down, till she was stretched on the hearth-flag within the nearness of an inch to the fire. She didn't waken, for she was sound asleep. It's like that Niamh Goldy-Head was asleep, too, but, however, or whatever, the story is, she didn't stir. There wasn't a soul in the house to protect the darling little child from the death that was faring on her. Nobody knew her to be in peril, but only God and---Barbara.

The mother was working without, and she not thinking that death was that near the child of her heart. She was turning a tune to herself, and lifting it finely, when she heard a `plop'---a sound as if something was falling on the floor.

`What's that, now?' says she to herself. `Something that fell from the wall, it's a chance. It can't be that Brideen meddled with it?' In with her in a hurry. It's barely the life didn't drop out of her, with the dint of fright. And what wonder? Her darling child was stretched on the hearth, and her little coateen blazing in the fire!

The mother rushed to her across the kitchen, lifted her in her arms, and pulled the coat from her. She only just saved her. If she'd waited another little half-moment, she was too late.

Brideen was awake now, and her two arms about the neck of her mother. She was trembling with the dint of fear, and, sure enough, crying, though it isn't too well she understood the story yet. Her mother was `smothering her with kisses and drowning her with tears.'

`What happened me, mama? I was dreaming. I felt hot, and I thought I was going up, up in the sky, and that the sun was burning me? What happened me?'

`It's the will of God that my stóirín wasn' burnt,---not with the sun, but with the fire. O, Brideen, your mother's little pet, what would I do if they'd kill you on me? What would your father do? 'Twas God spoke to me coming in that minute!---I don't know what sort of noise I heard? If it weren't for that, I mightn't have come in at all.'

She looked round her. Everything was in its own place on the table, and on the walls, and on the dresser,---but stay! In front of the dresser she took notice of a thing on the floor. What was it? A little body without a head---a doll's body.

`Barbara fallen from the dresser again,' says the mother. `My conscience, it's she saved your life to you, Brideen.'

`Not falling she did it at all!' says the little girl, `but it's how she saw I was in danger, and she threw a leap from the top of the dresser to save me. O, poor Barbara, you gave your life for my sake!'

She went on her knees, lifted the little corpse of the doll, and kissed it softly and fondly.

`Mama,' says she, sadly, `since Niamh Goldy-Head came, I'm afraid I forgot poor Barbara, and it's greater the liking I put in Niamh Goldy-Head than in her; and see, it's she was most true to me in the end. And she's dead now on me, and I won't be able to speak with her ever again, nor to say to her that I'd rather her a thousand times,--- aye, a hundred thousand times---than Niamh.'

`It's not dead she is at all,' says the mother, `but hurted. Your father will put the head on her again when he comes in.'

`If I'd fall from the top of the dresser, mama, and lose my head, would he be able to put it on me again?'

`He wouldn't. But you're not the same as Barbara.'

`I am the same. She's dead. Don't you see she's not moving or speaking?'

The mother had to admit this much.

Nothing would convince Brideen that Barbara wasn't killed, and that it wasn't to save her she gave her life. I myself wouldn't say she was right, but I wouldn't say she wasn't. I can only say what I said before: How do I know? How do you know?

Barbara was buried that evening on the side of the hill in the place where she and Brideen spent those long days of summer among the fern and the flowers. There are fairy-thimbles growing at the head of the grave, and daisies and buttercups plentifully about it.

3

Before going to sleep that night, Brideen called over to her mother.

`Do you think, mama,' says she, `will I see Barbara in heaven?'

`Maybe, by the King of Glory, you might,' says the mother.

`Do you think will I, daddy?' says she to her father.

`I know well you will,' says the father.

Those were the Adventures and Tragic Fate of Barbara up to that time.

Brigid of the Songs

Brigid of the Songs was the most famous singer in Rossnageeragh, not only in my time but in my father's time. It's said that she could wile the song-thrush from the branch with the sweetness of the music that God gave her; and I would believe it, for it's often she wiled me and other lads besides from our dinner or our supper. I'd be a rich man to-day if I had a shilling for every time I stopped outside her door, on my way home from school, listening to her share of songs; and my father told me that it's often and often he did the same thing when he was a lad going to school. It was a tradition among the people that it was from Raftery himself that Brigid learned Conntae Mhuigheó (The County of Mayo), and isn't it with the Conntae Mhuigheó that she drew the big tears out of the eyes of John MacHale one time he was on a visit here, along with our own Bishop, a year exactly before I was born?

A thing that's no wonder, when we heard that there was to be a Feis in Moykeeran, we all settled in our minds that it's Brigid would have the prize for the singing, if she'd enter for it. There was no other person, neither men-singers nor women- singers, half as good as she was in the seven parishes. She couldn't be beaten, if right was to be done. She would put wonderment on the people of Moykeeran and on the grand folk would be in it out of Galway and out of Tuam. She would earn name and fame for Rossnageeragh. She would win the prize easy, and she would be sent to Dublin to sing a song at the Oireachtas. There was a sort of hesitation on Brigid at first. She was too old, she said. Her voice wasn't as good as it used be. She hadn't her wind. A share of her songs were going out of her memory. She didn't want a prize. Didn't the men of Ireland know that she was the best singer in Iar- Connacht? Didn't Raftery praise her, didn't Colm Wallace make a song in her honour, didn't she draw tears out of the eyes of John MacHale? Brigid said that much and seven times more; but it was plain, at the same time, that there was a wish on her to go to the Feis, and we all knew that she would go. To make a short story of it, we were at her until we took a promise out of her that she would go.

She went. It's well I remember the day of the Feis. The world of Ireland was there, you'd think. The house was overflowing with poor people and with rich people, with noble folk and with lowly folk, with strong, active youths, and with withered, done old people. There were priests and friars there from every art. There were doctors and lawyers there from Tuam and from Galway and from Uachtar Ard. There were newspaper people there from Dublin. There was a lord's son there from England. The full of people went up, singing songs. Brigid went up. We were at the back of the house, listening to her. She began. There was a little bashfulness on her at the start, and her voice was too low. But she came to herself in time, according as she was stirring out into the song, and she took tears out of the eyes of the gathering with the last verse. There was great cheering when she had finished, and she coming down. We put a shout out of us you'd think would crack the roof of the house. A young girl went up. Her voice was a long way better than Brigid's, but, we thought, there was not the same sadness nor sweetness in the song as there was in Brigid's. She came down. The people cheered again, but I didn't notice that anybody was crying. One of the judges got up. He praised Brigid greatly. He praised the young girl greatly, too. He was very tedious.

`Who won the prize?' says one of us at last, when our share of patience was exhausted.

`Oh, the prize!' says he. `Well, in regard to the prize, we are giving it to Nora Cassidy (the young girl), but we are considering the award of a special prize to Brígid ní Mhainí (our Brigid). Nora Cassidy will be sent to Dublin to sing a song at the Oireachtas.'

The Moykeeran people applauded, for it was out of Moykeeran that Nora Cassidy was. We didn't say anything. We looked over at Brigid. Her face was grey-white, and she trembling in every limb.

`What did you say, sir, please?' says she in a strange voice.`Is it I that have the prize?'

`We are considering the award of a special prize to you, my good woman, as you shaped so excellently---you did that---but it's to Nora Cassidy that the Feis prize is given.'

Brigid didn't speak a word; but it's how she rose up, and without looking either to the right hand or to the left, she went out the door. She took the road to Rossnageeragh, and she was before us when we reached the village late in the night.

The Oireachtas was to be in Dublin the week after. We were a sad crowd, remembering that Brigid of the Songs wouldn't be there. We were full sure that fair play wasn't done her in Moykeeran, and we thought that if she'd go to Dublin she'd get satisfaction. But alas! we had no money to send her there, and if we had itself we knew that she wouldn't take it from us. We were arguing the question one evening at the gable of the Boatman's house, when who should come up but little Martin Connolly, at a full run, and he said to us that Brigid of the Songs was gone, the lock on the door, and no tale or tidings to be got of her.

We didn't know what happened her until a fortnight's time after that. Here's how it fell out. When she heard that the Oireachtas was to be in Dublin on such a day, she said to herself that she would be there if she lived. She didn't let on to anyone, but went off with herself in the night-time, walking. She had only a florin piece in her pocket. She didn't know where Dublin was, nor how far it was away. She followed her nose, it's like, asking the road of the people she met, tramping always, until she'd left behind her Cashlagh, and Spiddal, and Galway, and Oranmore, and Athenry, and Kilconnell, and Ballinasloe, and Athlone, and Mullingar, and Maynooth, until at last she saw from her the houses of Dublin. It's like that her share of money was spent long before that, and nobody will ever know how the creature lived on that long, lonesome journey. But one evening when the Oireachtas was in full swing in the big hall in Dublin, a country- woman was seen coming in the door, her feet cut and bleeding with the hard stones of the road, her share of clothes speckled with dust and dirt, and she weary, worn-out and exhausted.

She sat down. People were singing in the old style. Brígid ní Mhainí from Rossnageeragh was called on (for we had entered her name in hopes that we'd be able to send her). The old woman rose, went up, and started Conntae Mhuigheó.

When she finished the house was in one ree-raw with shouts, it was that fine. She was told to sing another song. She began on the Sail Og Ruadh (The Red Willow). She had only the first line of the second verse said when there came some wandering in her head. She stopped and she began again. The wandering came on her a second time, then a trembling, and she fell in a faint on the stage. She was carried out of the hall. A doctor came to examine her.

`She is dying from the hunger and the hardship,' says he.

While that was going on, great shouts were heard inside the hall. One of the judges came out in a hurry.

`You have won the first prize!' says he. `You did'---. He stopped suddenly.

A priest was on his knees bending over Brigid. He raised his hand and he gave the absolution.

`She has won a greater reward than the first prize,' says he.

The Mother

There was a company of women sitting up one night in the house of Barbara of the Bridge, spinning frieze. It would be music to you to be listening to them, and their voices making harmony with the drone of the wheels, like the sound of the wind with the shaking of the bushes.

They heard a cry. The child, it was, talking in its sleep.

`Some evil thing that crossed the door,' says Barbara. `Rise, Maire, and stir the cradle.'

The woman spoken-to got up. She was sitting on the floor till that, carding. She went over to the cradle. The child was wide awake before her, and he crying pitifully. Maire knelt down beside the cradle. As soon as the child saw her face he ceased from crying. A long, beautiful face she had; a brow, broad and smooth, black hair and it twisted in clusters about her head, and two grey eyes that would look on you slow, serious, and troubled-like. It was a gift Maire had, the way she would quieten a cross child or put a sick child to sleep, looking on that smooth, pleasant face and those grey, loving eyes of hers.

Maire began singing the Crónán na Banaltra (The Nurse's Lullaby) in a low voice. The other women ceased from their talk to listen to her. It wasn't long till the child was in a dead sleep. Maire rose and went back to where she was sitting before. She fell to her carding again.

`May you have good, Maire,' says Barbara. `There's no wonder in life but the way you're able to put children asleep. Though that's my own heir, I would be hours of the clock with him before he would go off on me.'

`Maire has magic,' says another woman.

`She's like the harpers of Meave that would put a host of men asleep when they would play their sleep-tunes,' says old Una ní Greelis.

`Isn't it fine she can sing the Crónán na Banaltra?'says the second woman.

`My soul, you would think it was the Virgin herself that would be saying it,' says old Una.

`Do you think is it true, Una, that it was the Blessed Virgin (praise to her for ever) that made that tune?' says Barbara.

`I know it's true. Isn't it with that tune she used put the Son of God (a thousand glories to His name) asleep when He was a child?'

`And how is it, then, the people do have it now?'says Barbara.

`Coming down from generation to generation, I suppose, like the Fenian tales,' says one of the women.

`No, my soul,' says old Una. `The people it was heard the tune from the Virgin's mouth itself, here in this country-side, not so long ago.'

`And how would they hear it?'

`Doesn't the world know that the glorious Virgin goes round the townlands every Christmas Eve, herself and her child?'

`I heard the people saying she does.'

`And don't you know if the door is left ajar and a candle lighting in the window, that the Virgin and her Child will come into the house, and that they will sit down to rest themselves?'

` My soul, but I heard that, too.'

`A woman of the Joyce country, it was, waiting up on Christmas Eve to see the Virgin, that heard the tune from her for the first time and taught it to the country. It's often I heard discourse about her, and I a growing girl. `Maire of the Virgin' was the name they gave her. It's said that it's often she saw the glorious Virgin. She died in the poor-house in Uachtar Ard a couple of years before I was married. The blessing of God be with the souls of the dead.'

`Amen, O Lord,' say the other women.

But Maire did not speak. She and her two big grey eyes were going, as you would say, through old Una's forehead, and she telling the story. She spoke after a spell.

`Are you sure, Una, that the Virgin and her Child come into the houses on Christmas Eve?' says she.

`As sure as I'm living.'

`Did you ever see her?'

`I did not, then. But the Christmas Eve after I was married I waited up to see her, if it would be granted me. A cloud of sleep fell on me. Some noise woke me, and when I opened my eyes I thought I saw, as it would be, a young woman and a child in her arms going out the door.'

No one spoke for a long time. Nothing was heard in the house but the drone of the spinning-wheels and the crackling of the fire, and the chirping of the crickets. Maire got up.

`I'll be shortening the road,' says she.`May God give you good night, women.'

`God speed you, Maire,' they answered together

She drew-to the door on herself.

There was, as it would be, a blaze of fire in that woman's heart, and she going the road home in the blackness of night. The great longing of her soul was plundering and desolating her---the longing for children. She had been married four years, and hadn't clann. It's often she would spend the hours on her knees, praying God to send her a child. It's often she would rise from the bed in the night-time, and go on her two naked knees on the cold, hard stone making the same petition. It's many a penance she used put on herself in hopes that the torture of her body would soften God's heart. It's often when her man would be from home, that she would go to sleep without dinner and without supper. Once or twice, when her man was asleep, she left the bed and went out and stood a long while under the dew of the night sending her prayer to the dark, lonesome skies. Once she drew blood from her shoulder-blades with blows she gave herself with a switch. Another time she stuck thorns into her flesh in memory of the crown of thorns that went on the brow of the Saviour. The penances and the heart-scald were preying on her health. Nobody guessed what was wrong with her. Her own husband---a decent, kindly man---didn't understand the story right, though it's often he would hear her in the night talking to herself as a mother would be talking to a child, when she would feel its hand or its mouth at her breast. Ah! it's many a woman hugs her heart and whispers in the dead time of night to the child that isn't born, and will not be.

Maire thought long until Christmas Eve came. But as there's a wearing on everything, so there was a wearing on the delay of that time. The day of Christmas Eve was tedious to her until evening came. She swept the floor of the house, and she cleaned the chairs, and she made up a good fire before going to sleep. She left the door on the latch, and she put a tall, white candle in the window. When she stretched herself beside her man it wasn't to sleep it was, but to watch. She thought her man would never sleep. She felt at last by the quiet breath he was drawing that he was gone off. Then she got up. She put on her dress, and she stole out to the kitchen. No one was there. Not even a mouse was stirring. The crickets themselves were asleep. The fire was in red ashes. The candle was shining brightly. She bent on her knees in the room door. It's sweet the calm of the house was to her in the middle of the night, though, I tell you, it was terrible. There came a heightening of mind on her as it used to come betimes in the chapel, and she going to receive communion from the priest's hands. She felt, somehow, that the Presence wasn't far from her, and that it wouldn't be long until she would hear a footstep. She listened patiently. The house itself, she thought, and what was in it both living and dead, was listening as well. The hills were listening, and the stones of the earth, and the starry stars of the sky.

She heard a sound. A footstep on the door-flag. She saw a young woman coming in and a child in her arms. The young woman drew up to the fire. She sat down on a chair. She began crooning, very low, to the child. Maire recognised the music. The tune that was on it was the Crónán na Banaltra.

A while to them like that. The woman hugging the child to her breast, and crooning, very sweetly, very softly. Maire on her two knees, under the shadow of the door. It wasn't in her to speak nor to move. She was barely able to draw her breath.

At last the woman rose. It's then Maire rose. She went hither to the woman.

`A Mhuire,' says she, whispering-like.

The woman turned her countenance towards her. A lovely, noble countenance it was.

`A Mhuire,' says Maire again. `I have a request of you.'

`Say it,' says the other woman.

`A child drinking the milk of my breast,' says Maire. `Don't deny me, a Mhuire.'

`Come closer to me,' says the other woman.

Maire came closer to her. The other woman raised her child. The child stretched out its two little hands, and it laid a hand softly on each cheek of Maire's two cheeks.

`That blessing will make you fruitful,' says the Mother.

`Its a good woman you are, a Mhuire,' says Maire. `It's good your Son is.'

`I leave a blessing in this house,' says the other woman.

She squeezed her child to her breast again and went out the door. Maire fell on her knees.

It's a year since that Christmas Eve. The last time I passed Maire's house there was a child in her breast. There was that look on her that doesn't be on living soul but a mother when she feels the mouth of her firstborn at her nipple.

`God loves the women better than the men,' said I to myself. `It's to them He sends the greatest sorrows, and it's on them He bestows the greatest joy.'

The Thief

One day when the boys of Gortmore were let out from school, after the Glencaha boys and the Derrybanniv boys had gone east, the Turlagh boys and the Inver boys stayed to have a while's chat before separating at the Rossnageeragh road. The master's house is exactly at the head of the road, its back to the hill and its face to Loch Ellery.

`I heard that the master's bees were swarming,' says Michileen Bartly Enda.

`In with you into the garden till we look at them,' says Daragh Barbara of the Bridge.

`I'm afraid,' says Michileen.

`What are you afraid of?'says Daragh.

`By my word, the master and the mistress will be out presently.'

`Who'll stay to give us word when the master will be coming?' says Daragh.

`I will,' says little Anthony Manning.

`That'll do,' says Daragh. `Let a whistle when you see him leaving the school.'

In over the fence with him. In over the fence with the other boys after him.

`Have a care that none of you will get a sting,' says Anthony.

`Little fear,' says Daragh. And off forever with them.

Anthony sat on the fence, and his back to the road. He could see the master over his right shoulder if he'd leave the schoolhouse. What a nice garden the master had, thought Anthony. He had rose-trees and gooseberry-trees and apple-trees. He had little white stones round the path. He had big white stones in a pretty rockery, and moss and maiden-hair fern and common fern growing between them. He had . . .

Anthony saw a wonder greater than any wonder the master had in the garden. He saw a little, beautiful wee house under the shade of one of the rose-trees; it made of wood; two storys in it; white colour on the lower story and red colour on the upper story; a little green door on it ; three windows of glass on it, one downstairs and two upstairs; house furniture in it, between tables and chairs and beds and delf, and the rest; and, says Anthony to himself, look at the lady of the house sitting in the door!

Anthony never saw a doll's house before, and it was a wonder to him, its neatness and order, for a toy. He knew that it belonged to the master's little girl, little Nance. A pity that his own little sister hadn't one like it--- Eibhlin, the creature, that was stretched on her bed for a long three months, and she weak and sick! A pity she hadn't the doll itself! Anthony put the covetousness of his heart in that doll for Eibhlin. He looked over his right shoulder---neither master nor mistress was to be seen. He looked over his left shoulder---the other boys were out of sight. He didn't think the second thought. He gave his best leap from the fence; he seized the doll; he stuck it under his jacket; he clambered out over the ditch again, and away with him home.

`I have a present for you,' says he to Eibhlin, when he reached the house.

`Look!' and with that he showed her the doll.

There came a blush on the wasted cheeks of the little sick girl, and a light into her eyes.

`Ora, Anthony, love, where did you get it?' says she.

`The master's little Nance, that sent it to you for a present,' says Anthony.

Their mother came in.

`Oh, mameen, treasure,' says Eibhlin, `look at the present that the master's little Nance sent me!'

`In earnest?' says the mother.

`Surely,' says Eibhlin. `Anthony, it was, that brought it in to me now.'

Anthony looked down at his feet, and began counting the toes that were on them.

`My own pet,' says the mother, `isn't it she that was good to you! Muise, Nance! I'll go bail that that present will put great improvement on my little girl.'

And there came tears in the mother's eyes out of gratitude to little Nance because she remembered the sick child. Though he wasn't able to look his mother between the eyes, or at Eibhlin, with the dint of fear, Anthony was glad that he committed the theft.

He was afraid to say his prayers that night, and he lay down on his bed without as much as an `Our Father.' He couldn't say the Act of Contrition, for it wasn't truthfully he'd be able to say to God that he was sorry for that sin. It's often he started in the night, imagining that little Nance was coming seeking the doll from Eibhlin, that the master was taxing him with the robbery before the school, that there was a miraculous swarm of bees rising against him, and Daragh Barbara of the Bridge and the other boys exciting them with shouts and with the music of drums. But the next morning he said to himself: `I don't care. The doll will make Eibhlin better.'

When he went to school the boys asked him why he went off unawares the evening before that, and he after promising them he'd keep watch.

`My mother sent for me,' says Anthony. `She'd a task for me.'

When little Nance came into the school, Anthony looked at her under his brows. He fancied that she was after being crying; he thought that he saw the track of the tears on her cheeks. The first time the master called him by his name he jumped, because he thought that he was going to tax him with the fault or to cross-question him about the doll. He never put in as miserable a day as that day at school. But when he went home and saw the great improvement on Eibhlin, and she sitting up in the bed for the first time for a month, and the doll clasped in her arms, says he to himself: `I don't care. The doll is making Eibhlin better.'

In his bed in the night-time he had bad dreams again. He thought that the master was after telling the police that he stole the doll, and that they were on his track; he imagined one time that there was a policeman hiding under the bed and that there was another hunkering behind the window- curtain. He screamed out in his sleep.

`What's on you?' says his father to him.

`The peeler that's going to take me,' says Anthony.

`You're only rambling, boy,' says his father to him. `Here's no peeler in it. Go to sleep.'

There was the misery of the world on the poor fellow from that out. He used think they would be pointing fingers at him, and he going the road. He used think they would be shaking their heads and saying to each other, `There's a thief,' or, `Did you hear what Anthony Pharaig Manning did? Her doll he stole from the master's little Nance. Now what do you say?' But he didn't suffer rightly till he went to Mass on Sunday and till Father Ronan started preaching a sermon on the Seventh Commandment: `Thou shalt not steal; and if you commit a theft it will not be forgiven you until you make restitution.' Anthony was full sure that it was a mortal sin. He knew that he ought to go to confession and tell the sin to the priest. But he couldn't go to confession, for he knew that the priest would say to him that he must give the doll back. And he wouldn't give the doll back. He hardened his heart and he said that he'd never give the doll back, for that the doll was making Eibhlin better every day.

One evening he was sitting by the bed-foot in serious talk with Eibhlin when his mother ran in in a hurry, and says she---

`Here's the mistress and little Nance coming up the bohereen!'

Anthony wished the earth would open and swallow him. His face was red up to his two ears. He was in a sweat. He wasn't able to say a word or to think a thought! But these words were running through his head: `They'll take the doll from Eibhlin.' It was all the same to him what they'd say or what they'd do to himself. The only answer he'd have would be, `The doll's making Eibhlin better.'

The mistress and little Nance came into the room. Anthony got up. He couldn't look them in the face. He began at his old clatter, counting the toes of his feet. Five on each foot; four toes and a big toe; or three toes, a big toe, and a little toe; that's five; twice five are ten; ten in all. He couldn't add to their number or take from them. His mother was talking, the mistress was talking, but Anthony paid no heed to them. He was waiting till something would be said about the doll. There was nothing for him to do till that but count his toes. One, two, three. . .

What was that? Eibhlin was referring to the doll. Anthony listened now.

`Wasn't it good of you to send me the doll?' she was saying to Nance. `From the day Anthony brought it in to me a change began coming on me.'

`It did that,' says her mother. `We'll be forever grateful to you for that same doll you sent to her. May God increase your store, and may He requite you for it a thousand times.'

Neither Nance nor the mistress spoke. Anthony looked at Nance shyly. His two eyes were stuck in the doll, for the doll was lying cosy in the bed beside Eibhlin. It had its mouth half open, and the wonder of the world on it at the sayings of Eibhlin and her mother.

`It's with trouble I believed Anthony when he brought it into me,' says Eibhlin, `and when he told me you sent it to me as a present.'

Nance looked over at Anthony. Anthony lifted his head slowly, and their eyes met. It will never be known what Nance read in Anthony's eyes. What Anthony read in Nance's eyes was mercy, love and sweetness. Nance spoke to Eibhlin.

`Do you like it?' says she.

`Over anything,' says Eibhlin. `I'd rather it than anything I have in the world.'

`I have the little house it lives in,' says Nance. `I must send it to you. Anthony will bring it to you to-morrow.'

`Ora!' says Eibhlin, and she clapping her two little thin palms together.

`You'll miss it, love,' says Eibhlin's mother to Nance.

`No,' said Nance. `It will put more improvement on Eibhlin. I have lots of things.'

`Let her do it, Cait,' said the mistress to the mother.

`Ye are too good,' says the poor woman.

Anthony thought that it's dreaming he was. Or he thought that it's not a person of this world little Nance was at all, but an angel come down out of heaven. He wanted to go on his knees to her.

When the mistress and little Nance went off, Anthony ran out the back door and tore across the garden, so that he'd be before them at the bohereen-foot, and they going out on the road.

`Nance,' says he, `I s-stole it,---the d-doll.'

`Never mind, Anthony,' says Nance, `you did good to Eibhlin.'

Anthony stood like a stake in the road, he couldn't speak another word.

Isn't it he was proud bringing the doll's house home to Eibhlin after school the next day! And isn't it they had the fun that evening settling the house and polishing the furniture and putting the doll to sleep on its little bed!

The Saturday following Anthony went to confession, and told his sin to the priest. The penance the priest put on him was to clean the doll's house once in the week for Eibhlin, till she would be strong enough to clean it herself. Eibhlin was strong enough for it by the end of a month. By the end of another month she was at school again.

There wasn't a Saturday evening from that out that they wouldn't hear a little, light tapping at the master's door. On the mistress going out Anthony would be standing at the door.

`Here's a little present for Nance,' he'd say, stretching towards her half-a-dozen duck's eggs, or a bunch of heather, or, at the least, the full of his fist of duileasg, and then he'd brush off with him without giving the mistress time to say `thank you.'

The Keening Woman

`Coilin,' says my father to me one morning after the breakfast, and I putting my books together to be stirring to school--- `Coilin,' says he, `I have a task for you to-day. Sean will tell the master it was myself kept you at home to-day, or it's the way he'll be thinking you're miching, like you were last week. Let you not forget now, Sean.'

`I will not, father,' says Sean, and a lip on him. He wasn't too thankful it to be said that it's not for him my father had the task. This son was well satisfied, for my lessons were always a trouble to me, and the master promised me a beating the day before unless I'd have them at the tip of my mouth the next day.

`What you'll do, Coilin,' says my father when Sean was gone off, `is to bring the ass and the little car with you to Screeb, and draw home a load of sedge. Michileen Maire is cutting it for me. We'll be starting, with God's help, to put the new roof on the house after to-morrow, if the weather stands.'

`Michileen took the ass and car with him this morning,' says I.

`You'll have to leg it, then, a mhic O,' says my father. `As soon as Michileen has an ass-load cut, fetch it home with you on the car, and let Michileen tear till he's black. We might draw the other share to-morrow.'

It wasn't long till I was knocking steps out of the road. I gave my back to Kilbrickan and my face to Turlagh. I left Turlagh behind me, and I made for Gortmore. I stood a spell looking at an oared boat that was on Loch Ellery, and another spell playing with some Inver boys that were late going to Gortmore school. I left them at the school gate, and I reached Glencana. I stood, for the third time watching a big eagle that was sunning himself on Carrigacapple. East with me, then, till I was in Derrybanniv, and the hour and a half wasn't spent when I cleared Glashaduff bridge.

There was a house that time a couple of hundred yards east from the bridge, near the road, on your right-hand side and you drawing towards Screeb. It was often before that I saw an old woman standing in the door of that house, but I had no acquaintance on her, nor did she ever put talk or topic on me. A tall, thin woman she was, her head as white as the snow, and two dark eyes, as they would be two burning sods, flaming in her head. She was a woman that would scare me if I met her in a lonely place in the night. Times she would be knitting or carding, and she crooning low to herself; but the thing she would be mostly doing when I travelled, would be standing in the door, and looking from her up and down the road, exactly as she'd be waiting for someone that would be away from her, and she expecting him home.

She was standing there that morning as usual, her hand to her eyes, and she staring up the road. When she saw me going past, she nodded her head to me. I went over to her.

`Do you see a person at all coming up the road?'says she.

`I don't,' says I.

`I thought I saw someone. It can't be that I'm astray. See, isn't that a young man making up on us?'says she.

`Devil a one do I see,' says I. `There's not a person at all between the spot we're on and the turning of the road.'

`I was astray, then,' says she. `My sight isn't as good as it was. I thought I saw him coming. I don't know what's keeping him.

`Who's away from you ?' says myself.

`My son that's away from me,' says she

`Is he long away ?'

`This morning he went to Uachtar Ard.'

`But, sure, he couldn't be here for a while,' says I. `You'd think he'd barely be in Uachtar Ard by now, and he doing his best, unless it was by the morning train he went from the Burnt House.'

`What's this I'm saying?' says she. `It's not to-day he went, but yesterday,--- or the day ere yesterday, maybe. . . I'm losing my wits.'

`If it's on the train he's coming,' says I, `he'll not be here for a couple of hours yet.'

`On the train ?' says she. `What train?'

`The train that does be at the Burnt House at noon.'

`He didn't say a word about a train,' says she. `There was no train coming a far as the Burnt House yesterday.'

`Isn't there a train coming to the Burnt House these years?' says I, wondering greatly. She didn't give me any answer, however. She was staring up the road again. There came a sort of dread on me of her, and I was about gathering off.

`If you see him on the road,' says she `tell him to make hurry.'

`I've no acquaintance on him,' says I.

`You'd know him easy. He's the playboy of the people. A young, active lad, and he well set-up. He has a white head on him, like is on yourself, and grey eyes . . . like his father had. Bawneens he's wearing.'

`If I see him,' says I, `I'll tell him you're waiting for him.'

`Do, son,' says she.

With that I stirred on with me east, and left her standing in the door.

She was there still, and I coming home a couple of hours after that, and the load of sedge on the car.

`He didn't come yet?' says I to her.

`No, a mhuirnín. You didn't see him?'

`No.'

`No? What can have happened him?'

There were signs of rain on the day.

`Come in till the shower's over,' says she. `It's seldom I do have company.'

I left the ass and the little car on the road, and I went into the house.

`Sit and drink a cup of milk,' says she.

I sat on the bench in the corner, and she gave me a drink of milk and a morsel of bread. I was looking all round the house, and I eating and drinking. There was a chair beside the fire, and a white shirt and a suit of clothes laid on it.

`I have these ready against he will come,' says she. `I washed the bawneens yesterday after his departing,---no, the day ere yesterday---I don't know right which day I washed them; but, anyhow, they'll be clean and dry before him when he does come. . . What's your own name?' says she, suddenly, after a spell of silence.

I told her.

`Muise, my love you are !' says she. `The very name that was---that is---on my own son. Whose are you?'

I told her.

`And do you say you're a son of Sean Feichin's?' says she. `Your father was in the public-house in Uachtar Ard that night. . . .' She stopped suddenly with that, and there came some change on her. She put her hand to her head. You'd think that it's madness was struck on her. She sat before the fire then, and she stayed for a while dreaming into the heart of the fire. It was short till she began moving herself to and fro over the fire, and crooning or keening in a low voice. I didn't understand the words right, or it would be better for me to say that it's not on the words I was thinking but on the music. It seemed to me that there was the loneliness of the hills in the dead time of night, or the loneliness of the grave when nothing stirs in it but worms, in that music. Here are the words as I heard them from my father after that---

1] Sorrow on death, it is it that blackened my heart,
2] That carried off my love and that left me ruined,
3] Without friend, without companion under the roof of my house
4] But this sorrow in my middle, and I lamenting.

5] Going the mountain one evening,
6] The birds spoke to me sorrowfully,
7] The melodious snipe and the voiceful curlew,
8] Telling me that my treasure was dead.

9] I called on you, and your voice I did not hear,
10] I called again, and an answer I did not get.
11] I kissed your mouth, and O God, wasn't it cold!
12] Och, it's cold your bed is in the lonely graveyard.

13] And O sod-green grave, where my child is,
14] O narrow, little grave, since you are his bed,
15] My blessing on you, and the thousand blessings
16] On the green sods that are over my pet.

17] Sorrow on death, its blessing is not possible---
18] It lays fresh and withered together;
19] And, O pleasant little son, it is it is my affliction,
20] Your sweet body to be making clay!

When she had that finished, she kept on moving herself to and fro, and lamenting in a low voice. It was a lonesome place to be, in that backward house, and you to have no company but yon solitary old woman, mourning to herself by the fireside. There came a dread and a creeping on me, and I rose to my feet.

`It's time for me to be going home,' says I. `The evening's clearing.'

`Come here,' says she to me.

I went hither to her. She laid her two hands softly on my head, and she kissed my forehead.

`The protection of God to you, little son,' says she. `May He let the harm of the year over you, and may He increase the good fortune and happiness of the year to you and to your family.'

With that she freed me from her. I left the house, and pushed on home with me.

`Where were you, Coilin, when the shower caught you?' says my mother to me that night. `It didn't do you any hurt.'

`I waited in the house of yon old woman on the east side of Glashaduff bridge,' says I. `She was talking to me about her son. He's in Uachtar Ard these two days, and she doesn't know why he hasn't come home ere this.'

My father looked over at my mother.

`The Keening Woman,' says he.

`Who is she ?' says I.

`The Keening Woman,' says my father. `Muirne of the Keens.'

`Why was that name given to her?' says I.

`For the keens she does be making,' answered my father. `She's the most famous keening-woman in Connemara or in the Joyce Country. She's always sent for when anyone dies. She keened my father, and there's a chance but she'll keen myself. But, may God comfort her, it's her own dead she does be keening always, it's all the same what corpse is in the house.'

`And what's her son doing in Uachtar Ard ?' says I.

`Her son died twenty years since, Coilin,' says my mother.

`He didn't die at all,' says my father, and a very black look on him. `He was murdered.'

`Who murdered him?'

It's seldom I saw my father angry, but it's awful his anger was when it would rise up in him. He took a start out of me when he spoke again, he was that angry.

`Who murdered your own grandfather? Who drew the red blood out of my grandmother's shoulders with a lash? Who would do it but the English? My curse on---'

My mother rose, and she put her hand on his mouth.

`Don't give your curse to anyone, Sean,' says she. My mother was that kindhearted, she wouldn't like to throw the bad word at the devil himself. I believe she'd have pity in her heart for Cain and for Judas, and for Diarmaid of the Galls.

`It's time for us to be saying the Rosary,' says she. `Your father will tell you about Coilin Muirne some other night.'

`Father,' says I, and we going on our knees, `we should say a prayer for Coilin's soul this night.'

`We'll do that, son,' says my father kindly.

Sitting up one night, in the winter that was on us, my father told us the story of Muirne from start to finish. It's well I mind him in the firelight, a broad-shouldered man, a little stooped, his share of hair going grey, lines in his forehead, a sad look in his eyes. He was mending an old sail that night, and I was on my knees beside him in the name of helping him. My mother and my sisters were spinning frieze. Seaneen was stretched on his face on the floor, and he in grips of a book. 'Twas small the heed he gave to the same book, for it's the pastime he had, to be tickling the soles of my feet and taking an odd pinch out of my calves; but as my father stirred out in the story Sean gave over his trickery, and it is short till he was listening as interested as anyone. It would be hard not to listen to my father when he'd tell a story like that by the hearthside. He was a sweet storyteller. It's often I'd think there was music in his voice; a low, deep music like that in the bass of the organ in Tuam Cathedral.

Twenty years are gone, Coilin (says my father), since the night myself and Coilin Muirne (may God give him grace) and three or four others of the neighbours were in Neachtan's public-house in Uachtar Ard. There was a fair in the town the same day, and we were drinking a glass before taking the road home on ourselves. There were four or five men in it from Carrowroe and from the Joyce Country, and six or seven of the people of the town. There came a stranger in, a thin, black man that nobody knew. He called for a glass.

`Did ye hear, people,' says he to us, and he drinking with us, `that the lord is to come home to-night ?'

`What business has the devil here ?' says someone.

`Bad work he's up to, as usual,' says the black man. `He has settled to put seven families out of their holdings.'

`Who's to be put out ?'says one of us.

`Old Thomas O'Drinan from the Glen, ---I'm told the poor fellow's dying, but it's on the roadside he'll die, if God hasn't him already; a man of the O'Conaire's that lives in a cabin on this side of Loch Shindilla; Manning from Snamh Bo; two in Annaghmaan; a woman at the head of the Island; and Anthony O'Greelis from Lower Camus.'

`Anthony's wife is heavy in child,' says Cuimin O'Niadh.

`That won't save her, the creature,' says the black man. `She's not the first woman out of this country that bore her child in a ditch-side of the road.'

There wasn't a word out of anyone of us.

`What sort of men are ye?' says the black man,---`ye are not men, at all. I was born and raised in a countryside, and, my word to you, the men of that place wouldn't let the whole English army together throw out seven families on the road without them knowing the reason why. Are ye afraid of the man that's coming here tonight?'

`It's easy to talk,' said Cuimin, `but what way can we stop the bodach?'

`Murder him this night,' says a voice behind me. Everybody started. I myself turned round. It was Coilin Muirne that spoke. His two eyes were blazing in his head, a flame in his cheeks, and his head thrown high.

`A man that spoke that, whatever his name and surname,' says the stranger. He went hither and gripped Coilin's hand.

`Drink a glass with me,' says he.

Coilin drank the glass. The others wouldn't speak.

`It's time for us to be shortening the road,' says Cuimin, after a little spell.

We got a move on us. We took the road home. The night was dark. There was no wish for talk on any of us, at all. When we came to the head of the street Cuimin stood in the middle of the road.

`Where's Coilin Muirne ?' says he.

We didn't feel him from us till Cuimin spoke. He wasn't in the company.

Myself went back to the public-house. Coilin wasn't in it. I questioned the pot- boy. He said that Coilin and the black man left the shop together five minutes after our going. I searched the town. There wasn't tale or tidings of Coilin anywhere. I left the town and I followed the other men. I hoped it might be that he'd be to find before me. He wasn't, nor the track of him.

It was very far in the night when we reached Glashaduff bridge. There was a light in Muirne's house. Muirne herself was standing in the door.

`God save you, men,' says she, coming over to us.`Is Coilin with you?'

`He isn't, maise,' says I. `He stayed behind us in Uachtar Ard.'

`Did he sell?' says she.

`He did, and well,' says I. `There's every chance that he'll stay in the town till morning. The night's black and cold in itself. Wouldn't it be as well for you to go in and lie down?'

`It's not worth my while,' says she. `I'll wait up till he comes. May God hasten you.'

We departed. There was, as it would be, a load on my heart. I was afraid that there was something after happening to Coilin. I had ill notions of that black man I lay down on my bed after coming home, but I didn't sleep.

The next morning myself and your mother were eating breakfast, when the latch was lifted from the door, and in comes Cuimin O'Niadh. He could hardly draw his breath.

`What's the news with you, man?,' says I.

`Bad news,' says he. `The lord was murdered last night. He was got on the road a mile to the east of Uachtar Ard, and a bullet through his heart. The soldiers were in Muirne's house this morning on the track of Coilin, but he wasn't there. He hasn't come home yet. It's said it was he murdered the lord. You mind the words he said last night?'

I leaped up, and out the door with me. Down the road, and east to Muirne's house. There was no one before me but herself. The furniture of the house was this way and that way, where the soldiers were searching. Muirne got up when she saw me in the door.

`Sean O'Conaire,' says she, `for God's pitiful sake, tell me where's my son? You were along with him. Why isn't he coming home to me?'

`Let you have patience, Muirne,' says I. `I'm going to Uachtar Ard after him.'

I struck the road. Going in the street of Uachtar Ard, I saw a great ruck of people. The bridge and the street before the chapel were black with people. People were making on the spot from every art. But, a thing that put terror on my heart, there wasn't a sound out of that terrible gathering---only the eyes of every man stuck in a little knot that was in the right-middle of the crowd. Soldiers that were in that little knot, black coats and red coats on them, and guns and swords in their hands; and among the black coats and red coats I saw a country boy, and bawneens on him. Coilin Muirne that was in it, and he in holds of the soldiers. The poor boy's face was as white as my shirt, but he had the beautiful head of him lifted proudly, and it wasn't the head of a coward, that head.

He was brought to the barracks, and that crowd following him. He was taken to Galway that night. He was put on his trial the next month. It was sworn that he was in the public-house that night. It was sworn that the black man was discoursing on the landlords. It was sworn that he said the lord would be coming that night to throw the people out of their holdings the next day. It was sworn that Coilin Muirne was listening attentively to him. It was sworn that Coilin said those words, `Murder him this night,' when Cuimin O'Niadh said, `What way can we stop the bodach?' It was sworn that the black man praised him for saying those words, that he shook hands with him, that they drank a glass together. It was sworn that Coilin remained in the shop after the going of the Rossnageeragh people, and that himself and the black man left the shop together five minutes after that. There came a peeler then, and he swore he saw Coilin and the black man leaving the town, and that it wasn't the Rossnageeragh road they took on themselves, but the Galway road. At eight o'clock they left the town. At half after eight a shot was fired at the lord on the Galway road. Another peeler swore he heard the report of the shot. He swore he ran to the place, and, closing up to the place, he saw two men running away. A thin man one of them was, and he dressed like a gentleman would be. A country boy the other man was.

`What kind of clothes was the country boy wearing?' says the lawyer.

`A suit of bawneens,' says the peeler.

`Is that the man you saw?'says the lawyer, stretching his finger towards Coilin.

`I would say it was.'

`Do you swear it?'

The peeler didn't speak for a spell.

`Do you swear it?' says the lawyer again.

`I do,' says the peeler. The peeler's face at that moment was whiter than the face of Coilin himself.

A share of us swore then that Coilin never fired a shot out of a gun; that he was a decent, kindly boy that wouldn't hurt a fly, if he had the power for it. The parish priest swore that he knew Coilin from the day he baptized him; that it was his opinion that he never committed a sin, and that he wouldn't believe from anyone at all that he would slay a man. It was no use for us. What good was our testimony against the testimony of the police? Judgment of death was given on Coilin.

His mother was present all that time. She didn't speak a word from start to finish, but her two eyes stuck in the two eyes of her son, and her two hands knitted under her shawl.

`He won't be hanged,' says Muirne that night. `God promised me that he won't be hanged.'

A couple of days after that we heard that Coilin wouldn't be hanged, that it's how his soul would be spared him on account of him being so young as he was, but that he'd be kept in gaol for the term of his life.

`He won't be kept,' says Muirne. `O Jesus,' she would say, `don't let them keep my son from me.'

It's marvellous the patience that woman had, and the trust she had in the Son of God. It's marvellous the faith and the hope and the patience of women.

She went to the parish priest. She said to him that if he'd write to the people of Dublin, asking them to let Coilin out to her, it's certain he would be let out.

`They won't refuse you, Father,' says she.

The priest said that there would be no use at all in writing, that no heed would be paid to his letter, but that he himself would go to Dublin and that he would speak with the great people, and that, maybe, some good might come out of it. He went. Muirne was full-sure her son would be home to her by the end of a week or two. She readied the house before him. She put lime on it herself, inside and outside. She set two neighbours to put a new thatch on it. She spun the makings of a new suit of clothes for him; she dyed the wool with her own hands; she brought it to the weaver, and she made the suit when the frieze came home.

We thought it long while the priest was away. He wrote a couple of times to the master, but there was nothing new in the letters. He was doing his best, he said, but he wasn't succeeding too well. He was going from person to person, but it's not much satisfaction anybody was giving him. It was plain from the priest's letters that he hadn't much hope he'd be able to do anything. None of us had much hope, either. But Muirne didn't lose the wonderful trust she had in God.

`The priest will bring my son home with him,' she used say.

There was nothing making her anxious but fear that she wouldn't have the new suit ready before Coilin's coming. But it was finished at last; she had everything ready, repair on the house, the new suit laid on a chair before the fire,---and still no word of the priest.

`Isn't it Coilin will be glad when he sees the comfort I have in the house,' she would say. `Isn't it he will look spruce going the road to Mass of a Sunday, and that suit on him!'

It's well I mind the evening the priest came home. Muirne was waiting for him since morning, the house cleaned up, and the table laid.

`Welcome home,' she said, when the priest came in. She was watching the door, as she would be expecting someone else to come in. But the priest closed the door after him.

`I thought that it's with yourself he'd come, Father,' says Muirne. `But, sure it's the way he wouldn't like to come on the priest's car. He was shy like that always, the creature.'

`Oh, poor Muirne,' says the priest, holding her by the two hands, `I can't conceal the truth from you. He's not coming, at all. I didn't succeed in doing anything. They wouldn't listen to me.'

Muirne didn't say a word. She went over and she sat down before the fire. The priest followed her and laid his hand on her shoulder.

`Muirne,' says he, like that.

`Let me be, Father, for a little while,' says she. `May God and His Mother reward you for what you've done for me. But leave me to myself for a while. I thought you'd bring him home to me, and it's a great blow on me that he hasn't come.'

The priest left her to herself. He thought he'd be no help to her till the pain of that blow would be blunted.

The next day Muirne wasn't to be found. Tale or tidings no one had of her. Word nor wisdom we never heard of her till the end of a quarter. A share of us thought that it's maybe out of her mind the creature went, and a lonely death to come on her in the hollow of some mountain, or drowning in a boghole. The neighbours searched the hills round about, but her track wasn't to be seen.

One evening myself was digging potatoes in the garden, when I saw a solitary woman making on me up the road. A tall, thin woman. Her head well-set. A great walk under her. `If Muirne ni Fhiannachta is living,' says I to myself, `it's she that's in it.' 'Twas she, and none else. Down with me to-the road.

`Welcome home, Muirne,' says I to her. `Have you any news?'

`I have, then,' says she, `and good news. I went to Galway. I saw the Governor of the gaol. He said to me that he wouldn't be able to do a taste, that it's the Dublin people would be able to let him out of gaol, if his letting-out was to be got. I went off to Dublin. O, Lord, isn't it many a hard, stony road I walked, isn't it many a fine town I saw before I came to Dublin? `Isn't it a great country, Ireland is?' I used say to myself every evening when I'd be told I'd have so many miles to walk before I'd see Dublin. But, great thanks to God and to the Glorious Virgin, I walked in on the street of Dublin at last, one cold, wet evening. I found a lodging. The morning of the next day I enquired for the Castle. I was put on the way. I went there. They wouldn't let me in at first, but I was at them till I got leave of talk with some man. He put me on to another man, a man that was higher than himself. He sent me to another man. I said to them all I wanted was to see the Lord Lieutenant of the Queen. I saw him at last. I told him my story. He said to me that he couldn't do anything. I gave my curse to the Castle of Dublin, and out the door with me. I had a pound in my pocket. I went aboard a ship, and the morning after I was in Liverpool of the English. I walked the long roads of England from Liverpool to London. When I came to London I asked knowledge of the Queen's Castle. I was told. I went there. They wouldn't let me in. I went there every day, hoping that I'd see the Queen coming out. After a week I saw her coming out. There were soldiers and great people about her. I went over to the Queen before she went in to her coach.

There was a paper, a man in Dublin wrote for me, in my hand. An officer seized me. The Queen spoke to him, and he freed me from him. I spoke to the Queen. She didn't understand me. I stretched the paper to her. She gave the paper to the officer, and he read it. He wrote certain words on the paper, and he gave it back to me. The Queen spoke to another woman that was along with her. The woman drew out a crown piece and gave it to me. I gave her back the crown piece, and I said that it's not silver I wanted, but my son. They laughed. It's my opinion they didn't understand me. I showed them the paper again. The officer laid his finger on the words he was after writing. I curtseyed to the Queen and went off with me. A man read for me the words the officer wrote. It's what was in it, that they would write to me about Coilin without delay. I struck the road home then, hoping that, maybe, there would be a letter before me. `Do you think, Sean,' says Muirne, finishing her story, `has the priest any letter?' There wasn't a letter at all in the house before me coming out the road; but I'm thinking it's to the priest they'd send the letter, for it's a chance the great people might know him.'

`I don't know did any letter come,' says I. `I would say there didn't, for if there did the priest would be telling us.'

`It will be here some day yet,' says Muirne.`I'll go in to the priest, anyhow, and I'll tell him my story.'

In the road with her, and up the hill to the priest's house. I saw her going home again that night, and the darkness falling. It's wonderful how she was giving it to her footsoles, considering what she suffered of distress and hardship for a quarter.

A week went by. There didn't come any letter. Another week passed. No letter came. The third week, and still no letter. It would take tears out of the grey stones to be looking at Muirne, and the anxiety that was on her. It would break your heart to see her going in the road to the priest every morning. We were afraid to speak to her about Coilin. We had evil notions. The priest had evil notions. He said to us one day that he heard from another priest in Galway that it's not more than well Coilin was, that it's greatly the prison was preying on his health, that he was going back daily. That story wasn't told to Muirne.

One day myself had business with the priest, and I went in to him. We were conversing in the parlour when we heard a person's footstep on the street outside. Never a knock on the house-door, or on the parlour-door, but in into the room with Muirne ni Fhiannachta, and a letter in her hand. It's with trouble she could talk.

`A letter from the Queen, a letter from the Queen!' says she.

The priest took the letter. He opened it. I noticed that his hand was shaking, and he opening it. There came the colour of death in his face after reading it. Muirne was standing out opposite him, her two eyes blazing in her head, her mouth half open.

`What does she say, Father?' says she. `Is she sending him home to me?'

`It's not from the Queen this letter came, Muirne,' says the priest, speaking slowly, like as there would be some impediment on him, `but from the Governor of the gaol in Dublin.'

`And what does he say? Is he sending him home to me?'

The priest didn't speak for a minute. It seemed to me that he was trying to mind certain words, and the words, as you would say, going from him.

`Muirne,' says he at last, `he says that poor Coilin died yesterday.'

At the hearing of those words, Muirne burst a-laughing. The like of such laughter I never heard. That laughter was ringing in my ears for a month after that. She made a couple of terrible screeches of laughter, and then she fell in a faint on the floor.

She was fetched home, and she was on her bed for a half year. She was out of her mind all that time. She came to herself at long last, and no person at all would think there was a thing the matter with her,---only the delusion that her son isn't returned home yet from the fair of Uachtar Ard. She does be expecting him always, standing or sitting in the door half the day, and everything ready for his home-coming. She doesn't understand that there's any change on the world since that night. `That's the reason, Coilin,' says my father to me, `that she didn't know the railway was coming as far as Burnt House. Times she remembers herself, and she starts keening like you saw her. 'Twas herself that made yon keen you heard from her. May God comfort her, says my father,' putting an end to his story.

`And daddy,' says I, `did any letter come from the Queen after that?'

`There didn't, nor the colour of one.'

`Do you think, daddy, was it Coilin that killed the lord?'

`I know it wasn't,' says my father. `If it was he'd acknowledge it. I'm as certain as I'm living this night that it's the black man killed the lord. I don't say that poor Coilin wasn't present.'

`Was the black man ever caught?' says my sister.

`He wasn't, maise,' says my father. `Little danger on him.'

`Where did he belong, the black man, do you think, daddy?' says I.

`I believe, before God,' says my father, `that it's a peeler from Dublin Castle was in it. Cuimin O'Niadh saw a man very like him giving evidence against another boy in Tuam a year after that.'

`Daddy,' says Seaneen suddenly, `when I'm a man I'll kill that black man.'

`God save us,' says my mother.

My father laid his hand on Seaneen's head.

`Maybe, little son,' says he, `we'll all be taking tally-ho out of the black soldiers before the clay will come on us.'

`It's time for the Rosary,' says my mother.

Iosagan

Old Matthias was sitting beside his door. Anyone going the road would think that it was an image of stone or of marble was in it---that, or a dead person---for he couldn't believe that a living man could stay so calm, so quiet as that. He had his head high and an ear on him listening. It's many a musical sound there was to listen to, for the person who'd have heed on them. Old Matthias heard the roar of the waves on the rocks, and the murmur of the stream flowing down and over the stones. He heard the screech of the heron-crane from the high, rocky shore, and the lowing of the cows from the pasture, and the bright laughter of the children from the green. But it wasn't to any of these he was listening that attentively---though all of them were sweet to him---but to the clear sound of the bell for Mass that was coming to him on the wind in the morning stillness.

All the people were gathered into Mass. Old Matthias saw them going past, in ones and twos, or in little groups. The boys were running and leaping. The girls were chattering merrily. The women were conversing in low tones. The men were silent. Like this, they'd travel the road every Sunday. Like this, Old Matthias would sit on his chair watching them till they'd go out of sight. They went past him this morning as usual. The old man remained looking at them till there was an end to the noise and the commotion, till the last group cleared the top of the church hill, till there was nothing to be seen but a long, straight road stretching out, and it white, till there were none to be found in the village but an odd old person in his bed, or children tricking on the green, and himself sitting beside his door.

Old Matthias would not go to the chapel. He hadn't heard `the sweet Mass' for over three score years. He was a strong, active youth the last time he blessed himself before the people, and now he was a withered, done old man, his share of hair grey-white, furrows in his brow, his shoulders bent. He hadn't bent his knee before God for the length of those three score years; he hadn't put a prayer to his Creator; he hadn't given thanks to his Saviour. A man apart, Old Matthias was.

Nobody knew why he wouldn't go to Mass. People said that he didn't believe there was a God in it. Other people said that he committed some terrible sin at the start of his life, and when the pritst wouldn't give him absolution in confession, that a rage of anger came on him, and he swore an oath that he wouldn't touch priest or chapel while he was living again. Other people said---but this was said only in a whisper by the fireside when the old people would be yarning by themselves after the children had gone asleep---these said that he sold his soul to a certain Great Man that he met once on the top of Cnoc-a'-daimh, and that this person wouldn't allow him to frequent the Mass. I don't know is it true or lying these stories are, but I do know that old Matthias wasn't seen at God's Mass in the memory of the oldest person in the village. Cuimin O'Niadh---an old man that got death a couple of years before this in his ninetieth year---said that he himself saw him there when he was a lump of a lad.

It wasn't thought that Old Matthias was a bad character. He was a man as honest, as simple, as natural as you would meet in a day's walking. There wasn't ever heard out of his mouth but the good word. He had no delight in drink or in company, no wish for gold or for property. He was poor, but it's often he shared with people that were poorer than he. He had pity for the infirm. He had mercy for the wretched. Other men had honour and esteem for him. The women, the children, and the animals loved him; and he had love for them and for everything that was generous and of clean heart.

Old Matthias liked women's talk better than men's talk. But he liked the talk of boys and girls still better than the talk of men or women. He used say that the women were more discerning than the men, and that the children were more discerning than either of them. It's along with the young folk he would spend the best part of his idle time. He would sit with them in a corner of the house, telling them stories, or getting stories out of them. They were wonderful, his share of stories. He had the Adventures of the Grey Horse in grandest way in the world. He was the one old body in the village who had the story of the Hen-Harrier and the Wren, properly. Isn't it he would put fright on the children, and he reciting Fú Fú Féasóg (The Two-Headed Giant), and isn't it he would take the laughs out of them discoursing on the doings of the piper in the Snail's Castle! And the songs he had! He could coax an ailing child asleep with his:

Shoheen, sho, and sleep, my pet;
The fairies are out walking the glen!

or he could put the full of a house of children in fits of laughter with his:

Hi diddle cum, the cat and his mother,
That went to Galway riding a drake!

And isn't it he had the funny old ranns; and the hard, difficult questions; and the fine riddles! As for games, where was the person, man, woman, or child could keep Lúrabóg, Lárabóg or An Bhuidhean Bhalbh (The Dumb Band) going with him!

In the fine time it's on the side of the hill, or walking the bog, you'd see Old Matthias and his little playmates, he explaining to them the way of life of the ants and of the woodlice, or inventing stories about the hedgehog and the red squirrel. Another time to them boating, the old man with an oar, some little wee boy with another one, and maybe a young girl steering. It's often the people who'd be working near the strand would hear the shouts of joy of the children coming to them from the harbour-mouth or, it might be, Old Matthias's voice, and he saying:

Oró! my curragheen O!
And óró! my little boat!

or something like it.

There used come fear on a share of the mothers at times, and they'd say to each other that they oughtn't let their children spend that much time with Old Matthias,--- `a man that frequents neither clergy nor Mass.' Once a woman of them laid bare these thoughts to Father Sean. It's what the priest said: `Don't meddle with the poor children,' says he. `They couldn't be in better company.'

`But they tell me he doesn't believe in God, Father.'

`There's many a saint in heaven to-day that didn't believe in God some time of his life. And, whisper here. If Old Matthias hasn't love for God---a thing that neither you nor I know---it's wonderful the love he has for the cleanest and most beautiful thing that God created,---the shining soul of the child. Our Saviour Himself and the most glorious saints in heaven had the same love for them. How do we know that it isn't the children that will draw Old Matthias to the knee of our Saviour yet?'

And the story was left like that.

On this Sunday morning the old man remained listening till the bell for Mass stopped ringing. When there was an end to it he gave a sigh, as the person would that would be weary and sorrowful, and he turned to the group of boys that were sporting themselves on the plot of grass---the `green' Old Matthias would call it---at the cross-roads. Old Matthias knew every curly-headed, bare-footed child of them. He liked no pastime at all better than to be sitting there watching them and listening to them. He was counting them, seeing which of his friends were in it and which of them were gone to Mass with the grown people, when he noticed among them a child he never saw before. A little, brown boy, with a white coat on him, like was on every other boy, and he without shoes or cap, as is the custom with the children of the West. The face of this boy was as bright as the sun, and it seemed to Old Matthias that there were, as it would be, rays of light coming from his head. The sun shining on his share of hair, maybe.

There was wonder on the old man at seeing this child, for he hadn't heard that there were any strangers after coming to the village. He was on the point of going over and questioning one of the little lads about him, when he heard the stir and chatter of the people coming home from Mass. He didn't feel the time slipping by him while his mind was on the tricks of the boys. Some of the people saluted him going past, and he saluted them. When he gave an eye on the group of boys again, the strange boy wasn't among them.

The Sunday after that, Old Matthias was sitting beside his door, as usual. The people were gathered west to Mass. The young folk were running and throwing jumps on the green. Running and throwing jumps along with them was the strange child. Matthias looked at him for a long time, for he gave the love of his heart to him on account of the beauty of his person and the brightness of his countenance. At last he called over one of the little boys:

`Who's yon boy I see among you for a fortnight back, Coilin?' says he---`he there with the brown head on him,---but have a care that it's not reddish-fair he is: I don't know is it dark or fair he is, and the way the sun is burning on him. Do you see him now---that one that's running towards us?'

`That's Iosagan,' says the little lad.

`Iosagan?'

`That's the name he gives himself.'

`Who are his people?'

`I don't know, but he says his father's a king.'

`Where does he live?'

`He never told us that, but he says that it's not far from us his house is.'

`Does he be along with you often?'

`Aye, when we do be spending time to ourselves like this. But he goes from us when a grown person is present. Look! he's gone already!'

The old man looked, and there was no one in it but the boys he knew. The child, the little boy called Iosagan, was missing. The same moment, the noise and bustle of the people were heard returning from Mass.

The next Sunday everything fell out exactly as it fell on the two Sundays before that. The people gathered west as usual, and the old man and the children were left by themselves in the village. The heart of Old Matthias gave a leap in his middle when he saw the Holy Child among them again.

He rose. He went over and he stood near Him. After a time, standing without a move, he stretched his two hands towards Him, and he spoke in a low voice:

`Iosagan! '

The Child heard him, and He came towards him, running.

`Come here and sit on my knee for a little while, Iosagan.'

The Child put His hand in the thin, knuckly hand of the old man, and they travelled side by side across the road. Old Matthias sat on his chair, and drew Iosagan to his breast.

`Where do You live, Iosagan?' says he, speaking low always.

`Not far from this My House is. Why don't you come on a visit to Me?'

`I'd be afraid in a royal house. It's told me that Your Father's a King.'

`He is High-King of the World. But there is no need for you to be afraid of Him. He is full of mercy and love.'

`I fear I haven't kept His law.'

`Ask forgiveness of Him. I and My Mother will make intercession for you.'

`It's a pity I didn't see You before this, Iosagan. Where were You from me?'

`I was here always. I do be travelling the roads, and walking the hills, and ploughing the waves. I do be among the people when they gather into My House. I do be among the children they do leave behind them playing on the street.'

`I was too timid---or too proud---to go into Your House, Iosagan; but I found You among the children.'

`There isn't any time or place that children do be amusing themselves that I am not along with them. Times they see Me; other times they do not see Me.'

`I never saw You till lately.'

`The grown people do be blind.'

`And it has been granted me to see You, Iosagan?'

`My Father gave Me leave to show Myself to you, because you loved His little children.'

The voices were heard of the people returning from Mass.

`I must go now from you.'

`Let me kiss the border of Your coat, Iosagan.'

`Kiss it.'

`Shall I see You again?'

`You will.'

`When?'

`This night.'

With that word He was gone.

`I will see Him this night!' says Old Matthias, and he going into the house.

The night came wet and stormy. The great waves were heard breaking with a booming roar against the strand. The trees round the chapel were swaying and bending with the strength of the wind. (The chapel is on a little hill that falls down with a slope to the sea.) Father Sean was on the point of closing his book and saying his Rosary when he heard a noise, as it would be somebody knocking at the door. He listened for a spell. He heard the noise again. He rose from the fire, went to the door, and opened it. A little boy was standing on the door-flag---a boy the priest didn't mind ever to have seen before. He had a white coat on him, and he without shoes or cap. The priest thought that there were rays of light shining from his countenance, and about his head. The moon that was shining on his brown, comely head, it's like.

`Who have I here?' says Father Sean.

`Put on you as quickly as you're able, Father, and strike east to the house of Old Matthias. He is in the mouths of death.'

The priest didn't want the second word.

`Sit here till I'm ready,' says he. But when he came back, the little messenger was gone. Father Sean struck the road, and he didn't take long to finish the journey, though the wind was against him, and it raining heavily. There was a light in Old Matthias's house before him. He took the latch from the door, and went in.

`Who is this coming to me?' says a voice from the old man's bed.

`The priest.

`I'd like to speak to you, Father. Sit here beside me.' The voice was feeble, and the words came slowly from him.

The priest sat down, and heard Old Matthias's story from beginning to end. Whatever secret was in the old body's heart it was laid bare to the servant of God there in the middle of the night. When the confession was over, Old Matthias received communion, and he was anointed.

`Who told you that I was wanting you, Father?' says he in a weak, low voice, when everything was done. `I was praying God that you'd come, but I hadn't any messenger to send for you.'

`But, sure, you did send a messenger to me?' says the priest, and great wonder on him.

`I didn't.'

`You didn't? But a little boy came and he knocked at my door, and he said to me that you were wanting my help!'

The old man sat up straight in the bed. There was a flashing in his eyes.

`What sort was the little boy was in it Father?'

`A gentle little boy, with a white coat on him.'

`Did you take notice was there a haze of light about his head?'

`I did, and it put great wonder on me.'

Old Matthias looked up, there came smile on his mouth, and he stretched out his two arms:

`Iosagan!' says he.

With that word, he fell back on the bed. The priest went hither to him softly, and closed his eyes.

Eoineen of the Birds

A conversation that took place between Eoineen of the Birds and his mother, one evening of spring, before the going under of the sun. The song-thrush and the yellow-bunting that heard it, and (as I think) told it to my friends the swallows. The swallows that told the story to me.

`Come on in, pet. It's rising cold.'

`I can't stir a while yet, little mother. I'm waiting for the swallows.'

`For what, little son?'

`The swallows. I'm thinking they'll be here this night.'

Eoineen was high on the big rock that was close to the gable of the house, he settled nicely on top of it, and the white back of his head against the foot of the ash-tree that was sheltering him. He had his head raised, and he looking from him southward. His mother looked up at him. It seemed to her that his share of hair was yellow gold where the sun was burning on his head.

`And where are they coming from, child?'

`From the Southern World---the place it does be summer always. I'm expecting them for a week.'

`And how do you know that it's this night they'll come?'

`I don't know, only thinking it. 'Twould be time for them to be here some day now. I mind that it was this day surely they came last year. I was coming up from the well when I heard their twittering---a sweet, joyful twittering as they'd be saying: `We've come to you again, Eoineen! News to you from the Southern World!'---and then one of them flew past me, rubbing his wing to my cheek.'

There's no need to say that this talk put great wonder on the mother. Eoineen never spoke to her like that before. She knew that he put a great wish in the birds, and that it's many an hour he used spend in the wood or by the strand-side, `talking to them,' as he'd say. But she didn't understand why there should be that great a wish on him to see the swallows coming again. She knew by his face, as well as by the words of his mouth, that he was forever thinking on some thing that was making him anxious. And there came unrest on the woman over it, a thing that's no wonder. `Sure, it's queer talk from a child,' says she in her own mind. She didn't speak a breath aloud, however, but she listening to each word that came out of his mouth.

`I'm very lonely since they left me in the harvest,' says the little boy again, like one that would be talking to himself. `They had that much to say to me. They're not the same as the song-thrush or the yellow-bunting that do spend the best part of their lives by the ditch-side in the garden. They do have wonderful stories to tell about the lands where it does be summer always, and about the wild seas where the ships are drowned, and about the lime-bright cities where the kings do be always living. It's long, long the road from the Southern World to this country. They see everything coming over, and they don't forget anything. I think long, wanting them.'

`Come in, white love, and go to sleep. You'll be perished with the cold if you stay out any longer.'

`I'll go in presently, little mother. I wouldn't like them to come, and I not to be here to give them welcome. They would be wondering.'

The mother saw that it was no good to be at him. She went in, troubled. She cleaned the table and the chairs. She washed the vessels and the dishes. She took the brush, and she brushed the floor. She scoured the kettle and the big pot. She trimmed the lamp, and hung it on the wall. She put more turf on the fire. She did a hundred other things that she needn't have done. Then she sat before the fire, thinking to herself.

The `piper of the ashes' (the cricket) came out, and started on his heartsome tune. The mother stayed by the hearthside, pondering. The little boy stayed on his airy seat, watching. The cows came home from the pasture. The hen called to her chickens. The blackbird and the wren, and the other little people of the wood went to sleep. The buzzing of the flies was stopped, and the bleating of the lambs. The sun sank slowly till it was close to the bottom of the sky, till it was exactly on the bottom of the sky, till it was under the bottom of the sky. A cold wind blew from the east. The darkness spread on the earth. At last Eoineen came in.

`I fear they won't come this night,' says he. `Maybe, with God's help, they might come to-morrow.'

The morning of the next day came. Eoineen was up early, and he watching out from the top of the rock. The middle of day came. The end of day came. The night came. But, my grief! the swallows did not come.

`Maybe we might see them here tomorrow,' says Eoineen, and he coming in sadly that night.

But they didn't see them. Nor did they see them the day after that, nor the day after that again. And it's what Eoineen would say every night and he coming in:

`Maybe they might be with us tomorrow'

There came a delightful evening in the end of April. The air was clear and cool after a shower of rain. There was a wonderful light in the western heavens. The birds sang a strain of music in the wood. The waves were chanting a poem on the strand. But loneliness was on the heart of the boy and he waiting for the swallows.

There was heard, suddenly, a sound that hadn't been heard in that place for more than a half-year. A little, tiny sound. A faint, truly-melodious sound. A pert, joyous twittering, and it unlike any other twittering that comes from the mouth of a bird. With fiery swiftness a small black body drove from the south. It flying high in the air. Two broad, strong wings on it. The shaping of a fork on its tail. It cutting the way before it, like an arrow shot from a bow. It swooped suddenly, it turned, rose again, swooped and turned again. Then it made straight for Eoineen, it speaking at the top of its voice, till it lay and nestled in the breast of the little boy after its long journey from the Southern World.

`O, my love, my love you are!' says Eoineen, taking it in his two hands and kissing it on the little black head. `Welcome to me from the strange countries! Are you tired after your lonely journey over lands and over seas? Ora, my thousand, thousand loves you are, beautiful little messenger from the country where it does be summer always! Where are your companions from you? Or what happened you on the road, or why didn't ye come before this?'

While he was speaking like this with the swallow, kissing it again and yet again, and rubbing his hand lovingly over its blue-black wings, its little red throat and its bright, feathered breast, another little bird sailed from the south and alighted beside them. The two birds rose in the air then, and it is the first other place they lay, in their own little nest that was hidden in the ivy that was growing thickly on the walls of the house.

`They are found at last, little mother!' says Eoineen, and he running in joyfully. `The swallows are found at last! A pair came this night---the pair who have their nest over my window. The others will be with us to-morrow.'

The mother stooped and drew him to her. Then she put a prayer to God in a whisper, giving thanks to Him for sending the swallows to them. The flame that was in the eyes of the boy, it would put delight on the heart of any mother at all.

It was sound the sleep of Eoineen that night.

The swallows came one after another now---singly at first, in pairs then, and at last in little flocks. Isn't it they were glad when they saw the old place again! The little wood and the brook running through it; the white, sandy beach; the ash-trees that were close to the house; the house itself and the old nests exactly as they left them half a year before that. There was no change on anything but only on the little boy. He was quieter and gentler than he used to be. He was oftener sitting than running with himself about the fields, as was his habit before that. He wasn't heard laughing or singing as often as he used be heard. If the swallows took notice of this much---and I wouldn't say they didn't---it's certain that they were sorry for him.

The summer went by. It was seldom Eoineen would stir out on the street, but he sitting contentedly on the top of the rock, looking at the swallows and listening to their twittering. He'd spend the hours like this. 'Twas often he was there from early morning till there came `tráthnóna gréine buidhe,' ---the evening of the yellow sun; and going within every night he'd have a great lot of stories, beautiful, wonderful stories, to tell to his mother. When she'd question him about these stories, he'd always say to her that it's from the swallows he'd get them.

The priest came in the evening.

`How is Eoineen of the Birds this weather, Eibhlin?' says he. (The other boys had nicknamed him `Eoineen of the Birds' on account of the love he had for the birds.)

`Muise, Father, he wasn't as well for many a long day as he is since the summer came. There's a blush in his cheek I never saw in it before.'

The priest looked sharply at her. He had noticed that blush for a time, and if he did, it didn't deceive him. Other people had noticed it, too, and if they did, it didn't deceive them. But it was plain it deceived the mother. There were tears in the priest's eyes, but Eibhlin was blowing the fire, and she didn't see them. There was a stoppage in his voice when he spoke again, but the mother didn't notice it.

`Where's Eoineen now, Eibhlin?'

`He's sitting on the rock outside, `talking to the swallows,' as himself says. It's wonderful the affection he has for those little birds. Do you know, Father, what he said to me the other day?'

`I don't know, Eibhlin.'

`He was saying that it's short now till the swallows would be departing from us again, and says he to me, suddenly, `What would you do, little mother,' says he, `if I'd steal away from you with the swallows?''

`And what did you say, Eibhlin?'

`I said to him to brush out with him, and not be bothering me. But I'm thinking ever since on the thing he said, and it's troubling me. Wasn't it a queer thought for him, Father,---he going with the swallows?'

`It's many a queer thought comes into the heart of a child,' says the priest. And he went out the door, without saying another word.

`Dreaming, as usual, Eoineen?'

`No, Father. I'm talking to the swallows.'

`Talking to them?'

`Aye, Father. We do be talking together always.'

`And whisper. What do ye be saying to one another?'

`We do be talking about the countries far away, where it does be summer always, and about the wild seas where the ships do be drowned, and about the lime-bright cities where the kings do be always living.'

The wonder of his heart came on the priest, as it came on the mother before that.

`It's you do be discoursing on these things, and they listening to you, it's like?'

`No, Father. They, mostly, that do be talking, and I listening to them.'

`And do you understand their share of talk, Eoineen?'

`Aye, Father. Don't you understand it?'

`Not too well I understand it. Make room for me on the rock there, and I'll sit a while till you explain to me what they do be saying.'

Up with the priest on the rock, and he sat beside the little boy. He put an arm about his neck and began taking talk out of him.

`Tell me what the swallows do be saying to you, Eoineen.'

`It's many a thing they do be saying to me. It's many a fine story they do tell to me. Did you see that little bird that went past just now, Father?'

`I did.'

`That's the cleverest storyteller of them all. That one's nest is under the ivy that's growing over the window of my room. And she has another nest in the Southern World---herself and her mate.'

`Has she, Eoineen?'

`Aye---another beautiful little nest thousands and thousands of miles from this. Isn't it a queer story, Father?---to say that the little swallow has two houses, and we having one only?'

`It's queer, indeed. And what sort is the country she has this other house in?'

`When I shut my eyes I see a lonely, awful country. I see it now, Father! A lonely, terrible country. There's neither mountain, nor hill, nor valley in it, but it a great, level, sandy plain. There's neither wood, nor grass, nor growth in it, but the earth as bare as the heart of your palm.

Sand entirely. Sand under your feet. Sand on every side of you. The sun scorching over your head. Without a cloud at all to be seen in the sky. It very hot. Here and there there's a little grassy spot, as it would be a little island in the middle of the sea. A couple of high trees growing on each spot of them. They sheltered from wind and sun. I see on one of these islands a high cliff. A terrible big cliff. There's a cleft in the cliff, and in the cleft there's a little swallow's nest. That's the nest of my little swallow.'

`Who told you this, Eoineen?'

`The swallow. She spends half of her life in that country, herself and her mate. Isn't it the grand life they have on that lonely little island in the middle of the desert! There does be neither cold nor wet in it, frost nor snow, but it summer always. . .And after that, Father, they don't forget their other little nest here in Ireland, nor the wood, nor the brook, nor the ash-trees, nor me, nor my mother. Every year in the spring they hear, as it would be, a whispering in their ears telling them that the woods are in leaf in Ireland, and that the sun is shining on the bawn-fields, and that the lambs are bleating, and I waiting for them. And they bid farewell to their dwelling in the strange country, and they go before them, and they make neither stop nor stay till they see the tops of the ash-trees from them, and till they hear the voice of the river and the bleating of the lambs.'

The priest was listening attentively.

`O!---and isn't it wonderful the journey they do have from the Southern World! They leave the big sandy plain behind them, and the high, bald mountains that are on its border, and they go before them till they come to the great sea. Out with them over the sea, flying always, always, without weariness, without growing weak. They see below them the mighty-swelling waves, and the ships ploughing the ocean, and the white sails, and seagulls, and the `black hags of the sea' (cormorants), and other wonders that I couldn't remember. And times, there rise wind and storm, and they see the ships drowning and the waves rising on top of each other; and themselves, the creatures, do be beaten with the wind, and blinded with the rain and with the salt water, till they make out the land at last. A while to them then going before them, and they looking on grassy parks, and on green- topped woods, and on high-headed reeks, and on broad lakes, and on beautiful rivers, and on fine cities, as they were wonderful pictures, and they looking on them down from them. They see people at work. They hear cattle lowing, and children laughing, and bells ringing. But they don't stop, but forever going till they come to the brink of the sea again, and no rest to them then till they strike the country of Ireland.'

Eoineen continued speaking like this for a long time, the priest listening to every word he said. They were chatting till the darkness fell, and till the mother called Eoineen in. The priest went home pondering to himself.

August and September went. October was half out. As the days were getting shorter, Eoineen was rising sadder. 'Twas seldom he'd speak to his mother now, but every night before going to sleep he'd kiss her fondly and tenderly, and he'd say:

`Call me early in the morning, little mother. It's little time I have now. They'll be departing without much delay.'

A beautiful day brightened in the middle of the month. Early in the morning, Eoineen took notice that the swallows were crowding together on the top of the house. He didn't stir from his seat the length of that day. Coming in in the evening, says he to his mother:

`They'll be departing to-morrow.'

`How do you know, white love?'

`They told me to-day. . .`Little mother,' says he again, after a spell of silence.'

`What is it, little child?'

`I can't stay here when they're gone. I must go along with them. . . to the country where it does be summer always. You wouldn't be lonely if I'd go?'

`O! treasure, my thousand treasures, don't speak to me like that!' says the mother, taking him and squeezing him to her heart. `You're not to be stolen from me! Sure, you wouldn't leave your little mother, and go after the swallows?'

Eoineen didn't say a word, but to kiss her again and again.

Another day brightened. The little, wee boy was up early. From the start of day hundreds of swallows were gathered together on the ridge of the house. From time to time one or two of them would go off and they'd return again, as if they'd be considering the weather. At last a pair went off and they didn't return. Another pair went off. The third pair went. They were going one after another then, till there didn't remain but one little flock only on the horn of the house. The pair that came first on yon evening of spring six months before that were in this little flock. It's like they were loath to leave the place.

Eoineen was watching them from the rock. His mother was standing beside him.

The little flock of birds rose in the air; and they faced the Southern World. Going over the top of the wood a pair turned back,---the pair whose nest was over the window. Down with them from the sky, making on Eoineen. Over with them then, they flying close to the ground. Their wings rubbed a cheek of the little boy, and they sweeping past him. Up with them in the air again, they speaking sorrowfully, and off for ever with them after the other crowd.

`Mother,' says Eoineen, `they're calling me. `Come to the country where the sun does be shining always,---come, Eoineen, over the wild seas to the Country of Light, ---come, Eoineen of the Birds!' I can't deny them. A blessing with you, little mother,---my thousand, thousand blessings to you, little mother of my heart. I'm going from you. . . over the wild seas. . . to the country where it does be summer always.'

He let his head back on his mother's shoulder and he put a sigh out of him. There was heard the crying of a woman in that lonely place---the crying of a mother keening her child. Eoineen was departed along with the swallows.

Autumn and winter went by and the spring was at hand again. The woods were in leaf, and the lambs bleating, and the sun shining on the bawn-fields. One glorious evening in April the swallows came. There was a wonderful light at the bottom of the sky in the west, as it was a year from that time. The birds sang a strain of music in the wood. The waves chanted a poem on the strand. But there was no little white- haired boy, sitting on the top of the rock under the shadow of the ash-trees. Inside in the house there was a solitary woman, weeping by the fire.

`. . .And, darling little son,' says she, `I see the swallows here again, but I'll never, never see you here.'

The swallows heard her, and they going past the door. I don't know did Eoineen hear her, as he was thousands of miles away . . .in the country where it does be summer always.

The Roads

Rossnageeragh will mind till death the night the Dublin Man gave us the feast in the schoolhouse of Turlagh Beg. We had no name or surname for that same man ever but the `Dublin Man.' Peatin Pharaig would say to us that he was a man who wrote for the newspapers. Peatin would read the Gaelic paper the mistress got every week, and it's a small thing he hadn't knowledge of, for there was discourse in that paper on the doings of the Western World and on the goings-on of the Eastern World, and there would be no bounds to the information Peatin would have to give us every Sunday at the chapel gate. He would say to us that the Dublin Man had a stack of money, for two hundred pounds in the year were coming to him out of the heart of that paper he wrote for every week.

The Dublin Man would pay a fortnight's or a month's visit to Turlagh every year. This very year he sent out word calling poor and naked to a feast he was gathering for us in the schoolhouse. He announced that there would be music and dancing and Gaelic speeches in it; that there would be a piper there from Carrowroe; that Brigid ni Mhainin would be there to give Conntae Mhuigheó; that Martin the Fisherman would tell a Fenian story; that old Una ni Greelis would recite a poem if the creature wouldn't have the asthma; and that Marcuseen Mhichil Ruaidh would do a bout of dancing unless the rheumatic pains would be too bad on him. Nobody ever knew Marcuseen to have the rheumatics but when he'd be asked to dance. `Bedam, but I'm dead with the pains for a week,' he'd always say when a dance would be hinted. But no sooner would the piper start on Tatter Jack Walsh, than Marcuseen would throw his old hat in the air, `hup!' he'd say, and take the floor.

The family of Col Labhras were drinking tea the evening of the feast.

`Will we go to the schoolhouse to-night daddy?' says Cuimin Col to his father.

`We will. Father Ronan said he'd like all the people to go.'

`Won't we have the spree!' says Cuimin.

`You'll stay at home, Nora,' says the mother, ` to mind the child.'

Nora put a lip on herself, but she didn't speak.

After tea Col and his wife went into the room to ready themselves for the road.

`My sorrow that it's not a boy God made me,' says Nora to her brother.

`Muise, why?' says Cuimin.

`For one reason better than another,' says Nora. With that she gave a little slap to the child that was half-asleep and half-awake in the cradle. The child let a howl out of him.

`Ara, listen to the child,' says Cuimin. `If my mother hears him crying, she'll take the ear off you.'

`I don't care if she takes the two ears off me,' says Nora.

`What's up with you?' Cuimin was washing himself, and he stopped to look over his shoulder at his sister, and the water streaming from his face.

`Tired of being made a little ass of by my mother and by everybody, I am,' says Nora. `I working from morning till night, and ye at your ease. Ye going to the spree to-night, and I sitting here nursing this child. `You'll stay at home, Nora, to mind the child,' says my mother. That's always the way. It's a pity it's not a boy God made me.'

Cuimin was drying his face meanwhile, and `s-s-s-s-s' coming out of him like a person would be grooming a horse.

`It's a pity, right enough,' says he, when he was able to speak.

He threw the towel from him, he put his head to one side, and looked complacently at himself in the glass was hanging on the wall.

`A parting in my hair now,' says he, `and I'll be first-class.'

`Are you ready, Cuimin?' says his father, coming out of the roorm.

`I am.'

`We'll be stirring on then.'

The mother came out.

`If he there is crying, Nora,' says she, `give him a drink of milk out of the bottle.'

Nora didn't say a word. She remained sitting on the stool beside the cradle, and her chin laid in her two hands and her two elbows stuck on her knees. She heard her father and her mother and Cuimin going out the door and across the street; she knew by their voices that they were going down the bohereen. The voices died away, and she understood that they were after taking the road.

Nora began making fancy pictures in her mind. She saw, she thought, the fine, level road and it white under the moonlight. The people were in groups making for the schoolhouse. The Rossnageeragh folk were coming out the road, and the Garumna folk journeying round by the mistress's house, and the Kilbrickan folk crowding down the hill, and the Turlagh Beg's crowding likewise; there was a band from Turlagh, and an odd sprinkling from Glencaha, and one or two out of Inver coming in the road. She imagined her own people were at the school gate by now. They were going up the path. They were entering in the door. The schoolhouse was well-nigh full, and still no end to the coming of the people. There were lamps hung on the walls, and the house as bright as it would be in the middle of day. Father Ronan was there, and he going from person to person and bidding welcome to everybody. The Dublin Man was there, and he as nice and friendly-like as ever. The mistress was there, and the master and mistress from Gortmore, and the lace-instructress. The schoolgirls sitting together on the front benches. Weren't they to sing a song? She saw, she thought, Maire Sean Mor, and Maire Pheatin Johnny, and Babeen Col Marcus, and the Boatman's Brigid, and her red head on her, and Brigid Caitin ni Fhiannachta, with her mouth open as usual. The girls were looking round and nudging one another, and asking one another where was Nora Col Labhras. The schoolhouse was packed to the door now. Father Ronan was striking his two hands together. They were stopping from talk and from whispering. Father Ronan was speaking to them. He was speaking comically. Everybody was laughing. He was calling on the schoolgirls to give their song. They were getting up and going to the head of the room and bowing to the people.

`My sorrow, that I'm not there,' says poor Nora to herself, and she laid her face in her palms and began crying.

She stopped crying, suddenly. She hung her head, and rubbed a palm to her eyes.

It wasn't right, says she in her own mind. It wasn't right, just, or decent. Why should she be kept at home? Why should they always keep her at home? If she was a boy she'd be let out. Since she was only a girl they would keep her at home. She was, as she had said to Cuimin that evening, only a little ass of a girl. She wouldn't put up with it any longer. She would have her own way. She would be as free as any boy that came or went. It's often before that she set her mind to the deed. She would do the deed that night.

It's often Nora thought that it would be a fine life to be going like a flying hawk, independent of everybody. The roads of Ireland before her, and her face on them; the back of her head to home and hardship and the vexation of her people. She going from village to village, and from glen to glen. The fine, level road before her, fields on both sides of her, little, well-sheltered houses on the slopes of the hills. If she'd get tired she could stretch back by the side of a ditch, or she could go into some house and ask the good woman for a drink of milk and a seat by the fire. To make the night's sleep in some wood under the shadow of trees, and to rise early in the morning and stretch out again under the lovely fresh air. If she wanted food (and it's likely she would want it), she would do a day's work here and a day's work there, and she would be full-satisfied if she got a cup of tea and a crumb of bread in payment for it. Wouldn't it be a fine life that, besides being a little ass of a girl at home, feeding the hens and minding the child!

It's not as a girl she'd go, but as a boy. No one in life would know that it's not a boy was in it. When she'd cut her hair and put on herself a suit of Cuimin's bawneens, who would know that it's a girl she was?

It's often Nora took that counsel to herself, but the fear would never let her put it in practice. She never had right leave for it. Her mother would always be in the house, and no sooner would she be gone than she'd feel wanted. But she had leave now. None of them would be back in the house for another hour of the clock, at the least. She'd have a power of time to change her clothes, and to go off unbeknown to the world. She would meet nobody on the road, for all the people were gathered in the schoolhouse. She would have time to go as far as Ellery to-night and to sleep in the wood. She would rise early on the morrow morning, and she would take the road before anybody would be astir.

She jumped from the stool. There were scissors in the drawer of the dresser. It wasn't long till she had a hold of them, and snip! snap! She cut off her back hair, and the fringe that was on her brow, and each ringleted tress that was on her, in one attack. She looked at herself in the glass. Ainghean O! isn't it bald and bare she looked. She gathered the curls of hair from the floor, and she hid them in an old box. Over with her then to the place where a clean suit of bawneens belonging to Cuimin was hanging on a nail. Down with her on her knees searching for a shirt of Cuimin's that was in a lower drawer of the dresser. She threw the clothes on the floor beside the fire.

Here she is now taking off her own share of clothes in a hurry. She threw her dress and her little blouse and her shift into a chest that was under the table. She put Cuimin's shirt on herself. She stuck her legs into the breeches, and she pulled them up on herself. She minded then that she had neither belt nor gallowses. She'd have to make a belt out of an old piece of cord. She put the jacket on herself. She looked in the glass, and she started. It's how she thought Cuimin was before her! She looked over her shoulder, but she didn't see anybody. It's then she minded that it's her own self was looking at her, and she laughed. But if she did itself, she was a little scared. If she'd a cap now she'd be ready for the road. Yes, she knew where there was an old cap of Cuimin's. She got it, and put it on her head. Farewell for ever now to the old life, and a hundred welcomes to the new!

When she was at the door she turned back and she crept over to the cradle. The child was sound asleep. She bent down and she gave a kiss to the baby, a little, little, light kiss in on his forehead. She stole on the tips of her toes to the door, opened it gently, went out on the street, and shut the door quietly after her. Across the street with her, and down the bohereen. It was short till she took the road to herself. She pressed on then towards Turlagh Beg.

It was short till she saw the schoolhouse by the side of the road. There was a fine light burning through the windows. She heard a noise, as if they'd be laughing and clapping hands within. Over across the fence with her, and up the school path. She went round to the back of the house. The windows were high enough, but she raised herself up till she'd a view of what was going on inside. Father Ronan was speaking. He stopped, and O, Lord! --- the people began getting up. It was plain that the fun was over, and that they were about to separate to go home. What would she do, if she'd be seen?

She threw a leap from the window. Her foot slipped from her, coming down on the ground, and she got a drop. She very nearly screamed out, but she minded herself in time. Her knee was a little hurt, she thought. The people were out on the school yard by that. She must stay in hiding till they were all gone. She moved into the wall as close as she could. She heard the people talking and laughing, and she knew that they were scattering after one another.

What was that? The voices of people coming towards her; the sound of a footstep on the path beside her! It's then she minded that there was a short-cut across the back of the house, and that there might be some people going the short-cut. Likely, her own people would be going that way, for it was a little shorter than round by the high road. A little knot came towards her; she recognized by their voices that they were Peatin Johnny's people. They passed. Another little knot; the Boatman's family. They drew that close to her that Eamonn trod on her poor, bare, little foot. She almost let a cry out of her the second time, but she didn't---she only squeezed herself tighter to the wall. Another crowd was coming: O, Great God, her own people! Cuimin was saying, `Wasn't it wonderful, Marcuseen's dancing!' Her mother's dress brushed Nora's cheek going by: she didn't draw her breath all that time. A company or two more went past. She listened for a spell. Nobody else was coming. It's how they were all gone, said she to herself. Out with her from her hiding-place, and she tore across the path. Plimp! She ran against somebody. Two big hands were about her. She heard a man's voice. She recognized the voice. The priest that was in it.

`Who have I?' says Father Ronan.

She told a lie. What else had she to say?

`Cuimin Col Labhras, Father,' says she.

He laid a hand on each shoulder of her, and looked down on her. She had her head bent.

`I thought you went home with your father and mother,' says he.

`I did, Father, but I lost my cap and I came back looking for it.'

`Isn't your cap on your head?'

`I found it on the path.'

`Aren't your father and mother gone the short-cut?'

`They are, Father, but I am going the road so that I'll be with the other boys.'

`Off with you, then, or the ghostst'll catch you!' With that Father Ronan let her go from him.

`May God give you good-night, Father,' says she. She didn't mind to take off her cap, but it's how she curtseyed to the priest after the manner of girls! If the priest took notice of that much he hadn't time to say a word, for she was gone in the turning of your hand.

Her two cheeks were red-hot with shame, and she giving face on the road. She was after telling four big lies to the priest! She was afraid that those lies were a terrible sin on her soul. She was afraid going that lonesome road in the darkness of the night, and that burthen on her heart. The night was very black. There was a little brightening on her right hand. The lake of Turlagh Beg that was in it. There rose some bird, a curlew or a snipe, from the brink of the lake, letting mournful cries out of it. Nora started when she heard the bird's voice, that suddenly, and the drumming of its wings. She hurried on, and her heart beating against her breast. She left Turlagh Beg behind her, and faced the long, straight road that leads to the Crosses of Kilbrickan. It's with trouble she recognized the shape of the houses on the hill when she reached the Crosses. There was a light in the house of Peadar O Neachtain, and she heard voices from the side of Snamh-Bo. She followed on, drawing on Turlagh. When she reached the Bog Hill the moon came out, and she saw from her the scar of the hills. There came a great cloud across the face of the moon, and it seemed to her that it's double dark the night was then. Terror seized her, for she minded that Cnoc-a'-Leachta (the Hill of the Grave) wasn't far off, and that the graveyard would be on her right hand then. It's often she heard that was an evil place in the middle of the night. She sharpened her pace; she began running. She thought that she was being followed; that there was a bare-footed woman treading almost on her heels; that there was a thin, black man travelling alongside her; that there was a child, and a white shirt on him, going the road before her. She opened her mouth to let a screech out of her, but there didn't come a sound from her. She was in a cold sweat. Her legs were bending under her. She nearly fell in a heap on the road. She was at Cnoc-a'-Leachta about that time. It seemed to her that Cill Eoin was full of ghosts. She minded the word the priest said `Have a care, or the ghosts'll catch you.' They were on her! She heard, she thought, the `plub-plab' of naked feet on the road. She turned to her left hand and she gave a leap over the ditch. She went near to being drowned in a deal-hole that was between her and the wood, unbeknown to her. She twisted her foot trying to save herself, and she felt pain. On with her, reeling. She was in the fields of Ellery then. She saw the lamp of the lake through the branches. A tree-root took a stumble out of her, and she fell. She lost her senses.

After a very long time she imagined that the place was filled with a sort of half-light, a light that was between the light of the sun and the light of the moon. She saw, very clearly, the feet of the trees, and them dark against a yellowish-green sky. She never saw a sky of that colour before, and it was beautiful to her. She heard a footstep, and she understood that there was someone coming towards her up from the lake. She knew in some manner that a prodigious miracle was about to be shown her, and that someone was to suffer there some awful passion. She hadn't long to wait till she saw a young man struggling wearily through the tangle of the wood. He had his head bent, and the appearance of great sorrow on him. Nora recognised him. The Son of Mary that was in it, and she knew that He was journeying all alone to His death.

The Man threw himself on His knees, and He began praying. Nora didn't hear one word from Him, but she understood in her heart what He was saying. He was asking His Eternal Father to send someone to Him who would side with Him against His enemies, and who would bear half of His burthen. Nora wished to rise and to go to Him, but she couldn't stir out of the place she was in.

She heard a noise, and the place was filled with armed men. She saw dark, devilish faces and grey swords and edged weapons. The gentle Man was seized outrageously, and His share of clothes torn from Him, and He was scourged with scourges there till His body was in a bloody mass and in an everlasting wound from His head to the soles of His feet. A thorny crown was put then on His gentle head, and a cross was laid on His shoulders, and He went before Him, heavy-footed, pitifully, the sorrowful way of His journey to Calvary. The chain that was tying Nora's tongue and limbs till that broke, and she cried aloud:

`Let me go with You, Jesus, and carry Your cross for You!'

She felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked up. She saw her father's face.

`What's on my little girl, or why did she go from us?' says her father's voice.

He lifted her in his arms and he brought her home. She lay on her bed till the end of a month after that. She was out of her mind for half of that time, and she thought at times that she was going the road, like a lone, wild-goose, and asking knowledge of the way of people; and she thought at other times that she was lying in under a tree in Ellery, and that she was watching again the passion of that gentle Man, and she trying to help Him, but without power to help him. That wandering went out of her mind at long last, and she understood she was at home again. And when she recognised her mother's face her heart was filled with consolation, and she asked her to put the child into the bed with her, and when he was put into the bed she kissed him lovingly.

`Oh, mameen,' says she,`I thought I wouldn't see you or my father or Cuimin or the child ever again. Were ye here all that time?'

`We were, white lamb,' says her mother.

`I'll stay in the place where ye are,' says she. `Oh, mameen, heart, the roads were very dark . . . And I'll never strike the child again,' ---and she gave him another little kiss.

The child put his arm about her neck, and he curled himself up in the bed at his full ease.

The Priest

It's in yon little house you see in the glen below you, and you going down the road from Gortmore to Inver, that my Priest lives. Himself and his mother, and his little sister, and his little, small, wee brother,--- those are the family in it. The father died before Taimeen, the youngest child of them, was born. There's no time I do be in Rossnageeragh but I spend an evening or two along with them, for the Priest and Maireen (the little sister) and Taimeen are the dearest friends I have. A soft, youngish-looking woman the Priest's mother is; she's a bit headstrong, maybe, but if she is itself she's as kind-hearted a woman as is living, after that. 'Twas she told me this story one evening that I was on a visit to her. She was washing the Priest, meanwhile, before the fire: a big tub of water laid on the floor beside her, the Priest and his share of clothes stripped from him, and she rubbing and scrubbing every inch of his body. I have my doubts that this work agreed too well with the Priest, for now and again he'd let a screech out of him. With every screech his mother would give him a little slap, and after that she'd kiss him. It's hard for a mother to keep her hand off a child when she has him bare; and 'twould be harder than that for a mother, as loving as this mother, to keep her mouth from a wee, red moutheen as sweet as Paraig's (Paraig's my Priest's name, you know). I ought to say that the Priest was only eight years old yet. He was a lovely picture, standing there, and the firelight shining on his well-knit body and on his curly head, and dancing in his grey, laughing eyes. When I think on Paraig, it's that way I see him before me, standing on the floor in the brightening of the fire.

But in regard to the story. About a year before this it is it fell out. Nora (the mother) was working about the house. Maireen and Taimeen were amusing themselves on the floor. `Fromsó Framsó' they had going on. Maireen was trying to teach the words to Taimeen, a thing that was failing on her, for Taimeen hadn't any talk yet. You know the words, I suppose?--- they're worth learning, for there's true poetry in them:

Fromsó Framsó,---
A woman dancing,
That would make sport,
That would drink ale,
That would be in time
Here in the morning!

Nora wanted a can of water to make tea. It was supper-time.

` Where's Paraig, Maireen?' says she. `He's lost this half-hour.'

`He went into the room, mameen.'

` Paraig!' says the mother, calling loudly.

Not a word from within.

`Do you hear, Paraig?'

Never a word.

`What's wrong with the boy? Paraig, I say!' says she, as loud as it was in her head.

` I'll be out presently, mama,' says a voice from the room.

`Hurry with you, son. It's tea-time, and devil a tear of water have I in the house.'

Paraig came out of the room.

`You're found at last. Push on down with you,---but what's this? Where did you get that shirt, or why is it on you? What were you doing?'

Paraig was standing in the door, like a stake. A shirt was fastened on him over his little coat. He looked down on himself. His face was red-burning to the ears.

`I forgot to take it off me, mama,' says he.

`Why is it on you at all?'

`Sport I was having.'

` Take it off you this minute! The rod you want, yourself and your sport!'

Paraig took off the shirt without a word and left it back in the room.

` Brush down to the well now and get a can of water for me, like a pet.' Nora already regretted that she spoke as harshly as that. It's a woman's anger that isn't lasting.

Paraig took the can and whipped off with it. Michileen Enda, a neighbour's boy, came in while he was out.

` It beats me, Michileen,' says Nora, after a spell, `to make out what Paraig does be doing in that room the length of the evening. No sooner has he his dinner eaten every day than he clears off in there, and he's lost till supper-time.'

` Some sport he does have on foot,' says Michileen.

` That's what he says himself. But it's not in the house a lad like him ought to be stuck on a fine evening, but outside in the air, tearing away.'

`A body's will is his delight,' says Michileen, reddening his pipe.

`One apart is Paraig, anyhow,' says Nora. `He's the most contrary son you ever saw. Times, three people wouldn't watch him, and other times you wouldn't feel him in the house.'

Paraig came in at this, and no more was said on the question. He didn't steal away this time, but instead of that he sat down on the floor, playing `Fromsó Framsó' with Maireen and Taimeen.

The dinner was on the table when Paraig came home from school the next evening. He ate his share of stirabout and he drank his noggin of milk, thankfully and with blessing. As soon as he had eaten and drunk, he took his satchel of books and west with him into the room, as was his habit.

The mother didn't let on that she was giving any heed to him. But, after a couple of minutes, she opened the door of the room quietly, and stuck the tip of her nose inside. Paraig didn't notice her, but she had a view of everything that was going on in the room.

It was a queer sight. Paraig was standing beside the table and he dressed in the shirt again. Outside of this, and back over his shoulders, he was fixing a red bodice of his mother's, that she had hanging on the wall. When he had this arranged properly, he took out the biggest book he had in his satchel---the Second Book it was, I believe---he opened it, and laid it before him on the table, propped against the looking-glass.

It's then began the antics in earnest. Paraig stood out opposite the table, bent his knee, blessed himself, and began praying loudly. It's not well Nora was able to understand him, but, as she thought, he had Latin and Gaelic mixed through other, and an odd word that wasn't like Latin or Gaelic. Once, it seemed to her, she heard the words `Fromsó Framsó,' but she wasn't sure. Whatever wonder was on Nora at this, it was seven times greater the wonder was on her when she saw Paraig genuflecting, beating his breast, kissing the table, letting on he was reading Latin prayers out of the Second Book, and playing one trick odder than another. She didn't know rightly what he was up to, till he turned round and said: `Dominus vobiscum!'

`God save us!' says she to herself when she saw this. ` He's pretending that he's a priest and he reading Mass! That's the Mass vestment he's wearing, and the little Gaelic book is the book of the Mass!'

It's no exaggeration to say that Nora was scared. She came back to the kitchen and sat before the fire. She didn't know what she ought to do. She was between two advices, which of them would be seemliest for her---to put Paraig across her knee and give him a good whipping, or to go on her two knees before him and beg his blessing!

` How do I know,' says she to herself, `that it's not a terrible sin for me to let him make a mimic of the priest like that? But how do I know, after that, that it's not a saint out of heaven I have in the house? And, sure, it would be a dreadful sin to lay hand on a saint! May God forgive it to me, it's often I laid the track of my fingers on him already! I don't know either way. I'm in a strait, surely!' Nora didn't sleep a wink that night with putting this question through other.

The next morning, as soon as Paraig was cleared off to school, Nora put the lock on the door, left the two young children under the care of Michileen's mother, and struck the road to Rossnageeragh. She didn't stop till she came to the parish priest's house and told her story to Father Ronan from start to finish. The priest only smiled, but Nora was with him till she drew a promise from him that he'd take the road out to her that evening. She whipped home then, satisfied.

The priest didn't fail her. He struck in to her in the evening. Timely enough, Paraig was in the room `reading Mass.'

`On your life, don't speak, Father!' says Nora. `He's within.'

The two stole over on their tiptoes to the room door. They looked inside. Paraig was dressed in the shirt and bodice, exactly as he was the day before that, and he praying piously. The priest stood a spell looking at him.

At last my lad turned round, and setting his face towards the people, as it would be:

`Orate,fratres,' says he, out loud.

While this was saying, he saw his mother and the priest in the door. He reddened, and stood without a stir.

`Come here to me,' says Father Ronan.

Paraig came over timidly.

`What's this you have going on?' says the priest.

`I was reading Mass, Father,' says Paraig. He said this much shyly, but it was plain he didn't think that he had done anything out of the way---and, sure, it's not much he had. But poor Nora was on a tremble with fear.

`Don't be too hard on him, Father,' says she. `He's only young.'

The priest laid his hand lightly on the white head of the little lad, and he spoke gently and kindly to him.

`You're too young yet, Paraigeen,' says he,` to be a priest, and it's not granted to anyone but to God's priest to say the Mass. But whisper here to me. Would you like to be serving Mass on Sunday?'

Paraig's eyes lit up and his cheek reddened again, not with shyness this time but with sheer delight.

`Ora, I would, Father,' says he; `I'd like nothing at all better.'

`That will do,' says the priest. `I see you have some of the prayers already.'

`But, Father, a mhuirnín'---says Nora, and stopped like that, suddenly.

`What's on you now?' says the priest.

` Breeches nor brogues he hasn't worn yet!' says she. `I think it early to put breeches on him till---'

The priest burst out laughing.

`I never heard,' says he, `that there was call for breeches. We'll put a little cassock out over his coat, and I warrant it'll fit him nicely. As for shoes, we've a pair that Martin the Fisherman left behind him when he went to Clifden. We'll dress you right, Paraig, no fear,' says he. And like that it was settled.

When the priest was gone, the mother stooped down and kissed her little son.

`My love you are!' says she.

Going to sleep that night, the last words she said to herself were: `My little son will be a priest! And how do I know,' says she, closing her eyes, `how do I know that it's not a bishop he might be by-and-by?'